45th Congress, 2nd Session
Birchard Hayes, President by vote-fraud
Almon Wheeler, vice-president
John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury

Coinage of Silver Dollars.

Mr. Boyd [Thomas Alexander Boyd, (1830-1897), Lewiston Illinois, R.;  studied law, admitted to the bar].  Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that so much has been said and written upon the question of the restoration of the silver dollar to its former place among the current coins of the country I shall be content to take up a small portion only of the time of the House in what I may have to say upon the subject.  When the matter was first before us for consideration I would have been pleased to have had an opportunity to dwell more at length upon what was then, and still is, the most prominent question before the country.  Its importance cannot be overestimated, and its solution will affect the material interests of this people profoundly for good or for evil.

While I am ever willing to pay due regard and proper respect to the opinions of others upon this as well as upon every question that may come before us for discussion, still there is one voice to which I am disposed to give greater heed than to any other ---the voice of the free, intelligent, and thinking people of this land.  That man is blind to the real situation who fails to perceive that these people have calmly, deliberately, and intelligently considered this question so vital to their interests and with a unanimity rarely if ever witnessed in this Republic of free thought, demand the restoration of the silver dollar, and that it be clothed again with its unlimited legal-tender quality.  All the material interests throughout our broad domain, Mr. Speaker, cry out with one accord and in marked harmony for the relief which it is felt and believed can be found in legislative enactments securing that end.

The great and vital question, then, to be answered is, will the Government gratify this most just and reasonable demand of our people and yield prompt obedience to their will, so plainly and emphatically and at the same time so respectfully declared.  This demand is no wild and crazed hue and cry, but the earnest, zealous, eloquent expression of what they know and feel to be for their best interests, and it therefore becomes the duty of their representatives in all the departments of the Government to render prompt and willing obedience to that demand.  They know, sir, where the remedy, to a great extent, for their present troubles can be found, and have been prompt to point it out;  and there is no saying truer than this, that when the great heart of the people utters its oracle the decision is invariably for the right.

I am not one of those, Mr. Speaker, who are disposed to censure the Congress which enacted this important legislation of 1873-'74, which eventuated in the displacement of the silver dollar from the list of our legal-tender currency, as guilty of the perpetration of a willful and deliberate fraud upon the rights and interests of the people of this land.  I am unwilling to believe that our representatives in Congress, then assembled, legislated purposely, knowingly, and deliberately, in the interest of the public creditor or bondholder to the detriment and serious hurt of the business and laboring masses of the country.  I am too charitable to indulge in any such suspicions or make such charges in the face of the known truth that many honest, well-meaning, and patriotic men, now as well as then, insist and claim that such legislation was wise and proper, and should be allowed to remain undisturbed.

With these, Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree, and I have no hesitation in saying that, in my bumble judgment, it was unwise and inconsiderate legislation, and allowed to become the law of the land without a full and adequate appreciation at that time of its fearful importance, and with but little, if any, conception of its effects upon the interests of the people and the country generally.  But now that its bad results have been made sadly manifest, now that time has supplied the touchstone by which it has been demonstrated that its effects are evil, and evil only, our duty is plain, Mr. Speaker, and it behooves Congress at the earliest possible moment to apply the remedy and give relief by the repeal of this noxious legislation, and a speedy return to that condition of our legal currency as it existed before the enactment of 1873-'74.  The American Congress perhaps never made a greater mistake than when it ordained that legislation, and there comes to us today from all quarters of this broad land a voice, like the "sound of many waters," praying for relief from the heavy burdens and oppressive weight it has entailed upon an already over-ladened people.  It was an innovation upon the established order of things which took us by surprise and for which we were not prepared.

For long years, ay, ever since the foundations of the Republic were laid, gold and silver alike, and not gold or silver, had been the recognized and universally accepted money of our people.  In fact it might be said that they were written down in that instrument as the money of the Constitution.  Concurrent construction and judicial decision have held that the provision of that instrument which prohibits the States from making anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts means that these metals in coin are equally and alike the constitutional money of this land with which to pay debts.  True it must be admitted that during the terrible ordeal of civil war through which we have been recently compelled to pass, the like of which we sincerely trust may never occur again in our history, we were forced to yield to the irresistible demands of a cruel necessity which recognized no law, and to issue as a dernier ressort a large amount of irredeemable paper currency.  This was the last desperate step of our threatened country, and taken for the purpose of relief for the time being from the terrible dangers which so menaced the existence of the Republic and startled the great heart of the nation from center to circumference with alarm at the impending ruin.  But that terrible ordeal has been passed;  the curtain of peace has shut out from view forever in this land, we trust, the bloody drama of war, and our country is fairly started again in her course of peace and prosperity.  Still it will take time to survive the effects of war in all respects, and the consequences of this necessitous departure from our wonted system of finance are being felt and seen to-day and will continue to be felt and seen for years to come.  Wild and reckless speculation followed as the logical and inevitable consequence of this large issue of an irredeemable and a depreciated currency to which we were compelled to resort, and its bad results are with us to-day and will be present to bother us for a long time to come.

Even if I did not feel and believe, Mr. Speaker, that every consideration of right, every consideration for the best interests of the people of all sections and the material prosperity of the country generally demanded the restoration of silver to its constitutional and historical equality with gold as of the legal money of the country, I should nevertheless earnestly favor the enactment of such a measure for the reason that the deposition of that coin from its proper and legitimate place was effected by legislation of doubtful fairness and propriety.  The question of fact, so positively asserted on the one side and so emphatically denied upon the other, as to whether the silver dollar was demonetized in a surreptitious manner by the legislation of 1873-'74, is a sufficient reason of itself, in my humble judgment, to justify us in revising if not in totally annulling its provisions.  As a matter of fact it is a matter of impossibility, from inspection of the records, to discover where in the coinage act of 1873 (if in that act at all) the silver dollar was dropped out and made to disappear.

I have taken occasion to examine with some degree of care the record of the proceedings of Congress with relation to this matter for the purpose if possible of getting at the true history.  In the course of that examination I must say that I have not been able to find, either in the debates upon the measure or in any of the amendments proposed to the original bill, a single reference or allusion to the question of omitting the silver dollar from the then established legal coins of the country.  The question then recurs, how was it dropped ?  In my judgment that result was accomplished by and through the passage of the Revised Statutes in 1874, as I shall endeavor to maintain and establish hereafter.

As a step in that direction it will be proper, Mr. Speaker, to examine somewhat carefully the history of the coinage act of 1873, its provisions and its purpose.  That act was manifestly intended simply to codify the laws relating to coinage, the Mint, and assay offices, and it did not, either in terms or by implication, as I insist, demonetize the silver dollar of 412½ grains.  The original bill, which was intended for the purposes above stated only, and which, if I have a correct comprehension of its provisions, made no material or radical changes in the law then in force relating to coinage, the Mint, and assay offices, passed the Senate after some discussion in the Forty-first Congress.  At the last session of the Forty-second Congress Mr. Kelley, a republican from the State of Pennsylvania, introduced a bill in the lower House of Congress on the same subject, and Mr. Hooper, of Massachusetts, reported still another, which took the place of Mr. Kelley's bill, differing somewhat in its provisions.  It further appears from the record that on the 9th day of April, 1872, Mr. Hooper took occasion to explain the provisions of his bill, among which was one that changed the weight of the silver dollar, reducing it from 412.5 grains to 384 grains.  The reason assigned for this reduction in its weight was (what was the fact) that the silver dollar was worth three cents or thereabouts more than the gold dollar.  Upon this proposition some discussion ensued favorable to the reduction and also to the propriety of making silver altogether a subsidiary coin in the currency.

But nowhere in that discussion does it appear, Mr. Speaker, that there was an intimation even of a desire or intention upon the part of any one to eliminate the silver dollar from the legal coins of the country or rob it of its legal-tender quality.  This bill was recommitted, and then again, on the 27th of May, 1872, Mr. Hooper reported to the House a substitute and moved to suspend the rules and put it upon its passage, which was done.  Debate was cut off under a call for the previous question.  It was passed without discussion and without being printed or read, under the honest impression by the House that this substitute made no material change or alteration in the then existing coinage laws.  We find here an instance of inconsiderate and hasty legislation that cannot be excused, much less justified.  I mean this in no censorious or offensive sense.  And I would say further that it admonishes us that in all legislation it is the part of wisdom to "make haste slowly," having reference always to the quality rather than to the amount.  A little care and deliberation then, sir, would have saved us all the doubt and uncertainty that hang around the passage of that act.

Mr. Hooper was casually interrogated as to the provisions of his substitute before the bill was put upon its passage, and his answer went to the extent only that no change was made in the then existing law so far as it affected the recoining of the small coins, but the silver dollar seemed to have been overlooked entirely.  No questions were asked concerning it, and as a consequence no information was had concerning its coinage.

But, Mr. Speaker, the circumstances attending this legislation seem to indicate pretty clearly that this bill, which, as I have stated, passed the House without debate and under a suspension of the rules, provided for a silver dollar, for the fact is, that in the debates upon it in the Senate subsequently it was alluded to, but nothing was said or proposed regarding its discontinuance as one of the legal-tender coins.  This bill remained in the Senate undisposed of until the next session, after having been considered in the Committee on Finance.  It was reported back to the Senate by the then chairman of that committee, Mr. Sherman, in December, 1872, with some amendments, coupled with the statement that it had passed the House, and that it was in substance the same bill which had passed the Senate in the Forty-first Congress.  It was printed with the amendments, and then again later, on the 7th day of January, 1873, it was reprinted with further amendments, and on the 17th of January was taken up for discussion in the Senate.  Then, too, we find that there was provision made in the bill for a silver dollar, which, it was alleged, was an exact equivalent of the five-franc piece of France.  In the discussion which was then had, as to the design and inscription to be placed upon that coin, not a word was said about doing away with the coin itself or dropping it from its place as a legal tender.

I have looked in vain, Mr. Speaker, in the reports, debates, and amendments for anything which indicates a disposition or design or intent to do away with the silver dollar itself.  After passing the Senate with the amendments of the committee it was sent to the House, and upon the refusal of the House to concur in such amendments a committee of conference was asked, which was finally agreed to by the Senate.  That committee of conference, consisting of Messrs. Sherman, Scott, and Bayard, of the Senate, and Hooper, Stoughton, and McNeely, of the House, made report on the 6th day of February, 1873, which report was concurred in by both Houses, and became a law without question or debate.  That law, as enrolled and signed, provides, in section 15, as follows:

That the silver coins of the United States shall be a trade-dollar, a half-dollar, or fifty-cent piece, a quarter-dollar, or twenty-five-cent piece, a dime, or ten-cent piece;  and the weight of the trade-dollar shall be four hundred and twenty grains troy;  the weight of the half-dollar shall be twelve grams and one-half of a gram;  the quarter-dollar and the dime shall be, respectively, one-half and one-fifth of the weight of said half-dollar;  and said coins shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment.

And by section 17 it is declared---

That no coin, either of gold, silver, or minor coinage, shall hereafter be issued from the Mint other than those of the denominations, standards, and weights herein set forth.

Section 18 proceeds to fix and prescribe the inscriptions and devices to be placed upon the coins, and the only words having special reference to the silver dollar are these:  "And on the reverse of the silver trade-dollar the weight and fineness of the coin shall be inscribed."

Now, Mr. Speaker, an examination of the report of the committee of conference shows us that the only sign or trace of changes in these sections is found in the following portion of such report:

That the House recede from its disagreement to the sixth amendment of the Senate and agree to the same, with the following amendment:

In line 5, strike out the word "grains " at the end of the line and insert in lieu thereof "grams;"  and in line 6, strike out "grain" and insert "gram."

And the Senate agree to the same.

That the House recede from its disagreement to the eighth amendment of the Senate and agree to the same, with the following amendment:

After "silver" insert "trade."

What follows of this report is not material to the question under consideration.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if I read the history of this legislation correctly, it does not appear where or at what stage the silver dollar, which was in section 15 when the bill went to the committee, was dropped out;  but we do find that in section 18 there is an indication that it was changed to the "trade" dollar.  Neither in the debates upon the measure nor in any of the proposed amendments do we find any allusion to the question of its omission from the list of legal-tender silver coins;  and it will appear upon a careful examination of said section 15, which is the only section of the act that contains any provisions affecting the question under consideration, that by its terms the silver dollar of 412½ grains was not demonetized.

The coins therein named were specifically declared to be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment.  These coins were first the trade-dollar, which is universally conceded was never intended for circulation at home, but was expressly coined for the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese trade.  By carelessness, however, in that legislation a grave error was committed in declaring it a legal tender at all ---an error which in a few years thereafter was corrected by a repeal of that clause which gave to it its legal-tender quality.  The other of said coins named in the act which were made a legal tender for the like sum of $5 and no more, are the half and quarter dollar and dimes, known as the subsidiary coins.  These were left just as they had been since 1853, changed neither in their legal-tender quality nor in their fineness or weight.  The last change made in them was in 1853, and then only as to their weight, for the reason that it was then deemed necessary to reduce their weight in order to keep them at home;  and they were, by reason of that legislation, so made less in weight that two half dollars or four quarters or ten dimes were no longer equal to the silver dollar of 412½ grains, and they were also then limited in their legal-tender quality to the amount of $5 and no more.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it is manifest that the coinage act of 1873 makes no change in the status of these subsidiary coins, but leaves them precisely as they were established by the act of 1853.  What change then, if any, did the coinage act of 1873 make in the legal-tender coin of the country ?  This, and this only, that it declared the trade-dollar a legal tender for $5 in any one payment ---an inadvertence which, as I have before stated, was afterward remedied.  If, then, the demonetization of the silver dollar of 412.5 grains was not accomplished by the provisions of the coinage act of 1873, how was it done ?  I shall not assume to answer this inquiry solely upon my own authority, but I will adopt the language of the distinguished Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Thurman,] who, in my humble judgment, answers it in terms too full, true, and correct to be improved upon, in the following concise and pointed statements.

I say, then, it was not by the coinage act of 1873 that the dollar of 412½ grains was demonetized.  How was it done ?  It was done by the passage of the Revised Statutes in 1874, and what were these Revised Statutes ?  The Revised Statutes were a compilation authorized by Congress to be made by certain commissioners appointed by the President.  What were they authorized to do ?  To change the law ?  No, sir;  they had no more authority to change the law than any man who walks the streets of Washington;  they had no right to change it in any single particular that altered its meaning;  they had no right to enact any new law, and they did not pretend to do so.  What did they do ?  They made their report.  It came in the form of a bill.  What was that bill;  what was its title ?  What is the title of the Revised Statutes as given in their bill ?  "Revised Statutes of the United States, passed at the first session of the Forty-third Congress, 1873-'74;  embracing the statutes of the United States, general and permanent in their nature, in force on the 1st day of December, 1873, as revised and consolidated by commissioners appointed under an act of Congress."

The volume purports simply to be a compilation of the statutes of the United States in force December 1, 1873, not any new enactment, not any change of the laws from what they were on the 1st of December, 1873, but simply a compilation in a convenient form of the laws as they existed on the 1st day of December, 1873.  What was the law on the 1st day of December, 1873, on the subject of legal tender ?  The silver dollar of 412½ grains was then by the law of the land a full legal tender for all debts, public and private.  No man can deny it.  It is useless to say that it was not in existence.  There was the law;  there was the power of the Government to put these silver dollars in existence to any extent which it saw fit.  There was a legal right to coin them, and to coin them to any extent that the Government saw fit to coin them.  Why, sir, this argument that they were not then in existence might just as well be made against gold.  Were there gold eagles or half eagles or quarter eagles or gold dollars enough to pay the debt of the United States, much less the debts of the whole public and all private individuals ?  Nobody pretends it;  yet gold coin was a legal tender, and the Government had the potentiality to coin it to meet any demand or the people or of the Government for its existence;  and just in the same way the silver dollar was full legal tender, and the Government possessed the potentiality to coin it to any extent to which public policy or justice required it to be coined.

Here, then, were these Revised Statutes declaring themselves on their face to be the laws that were in force on the 1st day of December, 1873.  As I have said, at that time the silver dollar of 412.5 grains was full legal tender for all debts, public and private.  But what was found in this book after it passed, after it passed without reading, after it passed as I saw it without ever the package containing the bill being untied on your Clerk's desk, but the bill simply read by its title;  what was found in it ?  There was found in it what I will read.  Remember that the fifteenth section of the coinage act was only one section in an act containing sixty-seven sections and there it belonged.  It said that "the said coins," that is the trade-dollar, the half dollar, the quarter dollar, the dime, shall be a "legal tender for $5 in any one payment," not touching the dollar of 412½ grains;  but now these revisers of the statutes, taking that section out of the "coinage" and clapping it under the head of "legal tender" and striking out the word "said," produced this thing which passed the Senate and passed the House, without I venture to say ten men in either body ever knowing that there was any such thing in the bill or would be in the law:

"Sec. 3586.  The silver coins of the United States shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment."

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have endeavored to give in as brief and concise and true form as I can the history of that most unfortunate legislation which, after violating the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution, stopped not there, but in its deleterious results has disturbed most seriously the commercial interests as well as the dearest rights of the people throughout the length and breadth of the land.  Gold and silver alike have since "time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary" constituted the basis and firm foundation of the monetary system of all nations and peoples.  With us it may truthfully be said, Mr. Speaker, that ever since the establishment of the Government silver coin has constituted the chief and oftentimes the only metallic legal-tender currency in general use.  If age entitles it to any consideration at our hands, then I answer, sir, that away back in 1792 the Congress of the United States made provision for the coinage of a silver dollar, equal in value to the Spanish milled dollar then current, containing 371¼ grains of pure silver, to be the monetary unit of value in this country.  The standard weight of that dollar was 416 grains, and so remained until 1837, when it was reduced to 412.5 grains.  Yet the quality of pure silver which it contained and its intrinsic value remained unchanged for a period extending over eighty years, during all which time the silver dollar so coined continued to be the monetary unit and standard of values for this country.  And it was left for us, in this enlightened day and generation, to lay sacrilegious hands upon this venerable coin and cast it out from the Eden of our favorable consideration and banish it, as some would have us do, forever from its place in the list of our legal coins.

I stand here, Mr. Speaker, to enter my protest against this act of vandalism and to demand in the name of right and justice, and in behalf of the millions of our people who desire this consummation, the restoration of that banished coin to that position to which it is constitutionally and of right entitled.  Although I am unwilling to pay blind tribute to whatever is past, yet every candid man must admit that in this step we have taken a wide and unwise departure from the practical wisdom which characterized the conduct of the statesmen of those former times in their treatment of this subject, and he who "runs may read" in our depressed condition to-day the sad and startling truth that we are paying dearly for this rash and inconsiderate bit of legislation.  Little wonder is it that we should feel these crushing results when we consider that by a single blow we have swept away that standard measure of values to which during a very large portion of the term of our national life our business as well as credits had adjusted themselves.

This innovation upon the existing state of things was of too grave and serious a nature to have been ventured upon without the most careful consideration and the fullest possible discussion of its merits, before the country, whose people were so deeply and materially interested in the event.  Now that time and opportunity have been afforded for that consideration and discussion, and now that its baneful effects have been seen and felt throughout this broad land, the people are announcing in thunder tones their condemnation of the rash act, and demanding in terms that it behooves their Representatives to hear and heed, the restoration of the silver dollar to its full legal-tender quality in payment of all debts, public as well as private.  I am in full accord with their demand in this regard, and I feel and believe, and therefore charge, that there will be signal and criminal omissions of the performance of an act of well-merited justice to that people if this Congress fails to do its might in the effort to repeal the legislation of 1873-'74, and to restore the dollar to its legitimate and rightful place in our currency.

I aver further, Mr. Speaker, that, whether done designedly or not, the whole tenor of our legislation since 1869 has had the effect of enhancing the value of the bonds of this Government and thereby augmenting the weight of the public burden, and that it is now high time to do something in the interest of the debtor, and if possible relieve the people from the crushing load that now bears so hardly upon them.  I would not do this, sir, to the detriment of any of the rights of the public creditor, but I urge it without feeling liable to any such charge, in the light of the glaring truth that all these bonds which our golden-mouthed advocates of demonetization insist are and should be payable in gold, are by the terms, so plainly written upon their face that no reasonable man can doubt, payable and redeemable in coin of the standard value of the United States on the 14th day of July, 1870.  At that date coin of the standard value of the United States embraced both the silver and the gold dollar, and both were equally a lawful tender in payment of public and private debts alike.  If this be so, then what semblance of justice is there in the charge so flippantly and glibly made and repeated by our opponents that in the remonetization of silver we are guilty of a breach of the public faith and of a willful attempt to force the holders of our bonds to receive the principal and interest of a debt in silver when they had been led to believe that "payment in coin" meant gold coin and not silver.  I deny that any such interpretation can be placed upon our conduct, and these charges, coupled with the zeal with which they are made, evidence the desperation of desperate advocates of a desperate cause.  In viewing the personnel of these champions of demonetization, I cannot but believe that they are actuated as much by self-interest as by a regard for the public credit or the people's weal.

There is nothing in the circumstances surrounding the contracting of the debt, and certainly nothing in the terms of the contract, to warrant the belief on the part of the purchasers of our bonds that they were payable, or meant to be payable, in gold.  And whether viewed in the light of a legal or moral question, there is no feasible ground upon which to base such a claim.  We simply ask a bare compliance with the terms of a law so plain as to leave no room for doubt as to its proper construction.  And I venture now and in this presence the assertion that if by some strange and unlooked-for concurrence of causes the relative supply of the two metals was reversed in this country, that if our western mines instead of silver should yield their tons of gold, that those who are now foremost and loudest and fiercest in their advocacy of payment in gold would suddenly become the ardent and zealous advocates of the propriety of the payment of the debt in silver, ready and willing to see perfect harmony between the letter and the spirit of the contract.  They would then cease to play the part of theorists and doctrinaires and grow eloquent over the advantages of a single over a double monetary standard, and be content to make the most out of their securities by receiving in payment the silver they now so bitterly denounce.  I say it in no offensive sense, but it is apparent to the most casual observer that the opponents of silver, who are the advocates of a single standard, are those who constitute the creditor class in our midst, the money power as it is ordinarily termed.  And it is marvelous how they insist upon a faithful and strict observance of the rights of the laboring and business classes, and attempt to dignify their position by professions of kindest regards and solicitude for their interests.  They would not have two kinds of money;  the one for the poor, the other for the rich.

Neither would I, Mr. Speaker.  But restore to silver its legal-tender quality and it will resume its equal place beside the other metal.  I have intimated before that the people of this country know their interests, and I assert now that with astounding unanimity they have declared for the restoration of silver and against the pretended friends who have professed so much in their behalf but are careful to take no single step in that direction.  The solicitude they manifest in lipservice for the workingmen and laborers is a charming piece of acting, and their persistent efforts to persuade those classes that the remonetization of silver will reduce their wages 10 per cent. is a specimen of concern rarely witnessed on Earth.  Why, I ask, have these defenders of the act which took away from us so large a portion of the circulating medium of our country, and who still use their utmost endeavor to prevent its restoration ---why, I ask, have these bright particular stars in the zodiac of financial wisdom and patriotic worth become so suddenly and earnestly solicitous of the laborer's welfare, in face of the fact that these laborers have not asked for this special favor of their championship, but, on the contrary, are flooding this Congress with petitions and memorials beseeching and advising legislation in the directly opposite direction ?  I deny the claim of magnanimity to those who grant a favor that is neither asked for nor desired.  The masses of our people know and understand their interests as involved in this issue as fully and intelligently as those who profess to have their welfare so much at heart, but who either willfully or ignorantly fail to take any steps in the material advancement of that welfare.

These masses are willing and content to receive their pay in the restored silver dollar, whether it be in payment of wages or in liquidation of any bonds they may be fortunate enough to hold.  Judging of the future by the past they feel and believe that the simple act of remonetization itself will have the effect to wipe out the difference that now exists between the value of silver and gold and place them side by side at par.  If this be so, then I ask who can be wronged by the proposed legislation !  Certainly not the public creditors, whether their debts were contracted before or since the legislation of 1873-'74.  No respectable authority pretends to urge that the depreciation of silver was brought about by any other cause than its demonetization.  And if this be true, the removal of this cause will re-establish it in its former position and again bring it upon a par with gold.  This being so, then who can say with any degree of plausibility that the Government will do wrong by paying her debts in that which is on a par with gold ?  Those who oppose this popular demand endeavor to clothe it in sectional garb, and with faulty statesmanship attempt to array North against South and the East against the West.  If ever a question was free from such characteristics it is this one.  It affects no locality particularly, but the entire people, and they to-day, if we understand their voice correctly, have decided the question by an overwhelming majority, which will grow larger day by day.

And that decision is strictly on the side of right and fair and honorable dealing, and no public creditor can have just cause for complaint.  That decision involves the violation of no provision or contract, perpetrates no wrong upon any one, but means only the consummation of an act of fair dealing and perfect justice.  Everybody admits that when the "act to strengthen the public credit" became a law in 1869, silver constituted a part of the coin in which the bonds were specifically declared to be payable.  So, also, when the refunding act of 1870 was passed, it still remained and was a constituent part of the standard coin, in which the new bonds were to be redeemed and their interest paid.  The additional truth stares us in the face that this coin disappeared in a quiet, if not a mysterious manner, and that Congress has the undisputed power and full authority to provide for its issue again, and that it will then become as it was before a part of the coin of the country of the same standard value as on July 14, 1870, and that as a consequence the Government can use it in payment of the public debt.  Now, I ask, Mr. Speaker, in view of these facts, why should the Government, grieviously burdened as she is by her mountain-high obligations, be expected or required to pay her debts in a currency whose value has thus been artificially enhanced at the cost of the interests of her people ?  And how unkind and cruel it is that those of us who are willing and offer and insist upon the strict fulfillment of all the legal and moral obligations involved in the payment of these debts should be denounced as knaves and the advocates of repudiation.

But, sir, these gentlemen will learn in due time that bitter, blatant denunciation is a harmless weapon and that the narrow, uncharitable advocacy of a selfish zealot is of but little benefit to any cause.  These questions deserve a higher order of antagonism, and until this is used the people have no fears for the issue.  Incased in the triple armor of a just quarrel the advocates of concession to the all but unanimous wish and demand of the people have no question as to the result of the contest, satisfied that right will prevail and justice at last be done to those who have been so fearfully wronged.  In the past no single act has been done that has prejudiced the rights of the creditors of this nation, and we promise to be equally consistent in our conduct for the future.  No one entertains the most remote thought of repudiation, either directly or indirectly.  We simply ask for a fair compliance with the terms of the contract and will be content with nothing less, nor concede anything more.  Indisputable figures demonstrate the truth that the bondholders have hitherto been magnanimously dealt with and that with them there should be no cause for complaint against the proposed legislation.  Since 1862 the profits to purchasers of our bonds in payment at par in United States coin amount to the enormous sum of $678,551,460 on $2,049,975,700 sold.  In Heaven's name, is not this enough ?  If to oppose the importunate demands of these moneyed interests for "more" constitutes a communist, then I am one.  This is not a question of class or section, but one that concerns the entire people of this great American nation, whose interests should be in harmony and whose aim should be to insure their own welfare without injuring the rights of others.

In this species of communism I keep company with a vast majority of the people in every section and quarter of the country.  Plain, hill, valley, and savanna are alike full of those who recognize the truism that the object and aim of legitimate legislation and patriotic statesmanship should be to secure the greatest good to the greatest number.  The benefit of this legislation will be felt North and East as well as South and West, and the former sections need the desired relief more if possible than the latter.  The only ones who have escaped the wreck of business and fortunes are the holders of our bonds.  This fact is admitted by Mr. Belmont in his recent letter to Mr. Hendricks, as will appear from the following extract:

While the investments of the rich have been shrinking, their mills closing, their real estate sunk under mortgages, their railroads defaulting, and our well-to-do merchants and traders breaking down by thousands under falling values on every hand, suffering far more keenly and generally in all eastern cities than any western rural populations can begin to imagine, these millions of wage-receiving, industrious poor who are holders of our national debt have been spared the affliction of seeing their investment tumbling down in the general ruin.

But, Mr. Speaker, before I conclude, I desire to refer briefly to a matter rather of personal than public interest.  On Saturday, the 9th of February instant, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Chittenden] took occasion again to enlighten the House and the country with one of his exhaustive, burning, zealous, eloquent appeals in behalf of the single standard, demonstrating the grand truth which I have recognized since I first felt the spell of his God-given gift that in him we have the orator born ---not made--- now a rara avis in terris.  He has been the especial champion upon this floor of dear money and the ever-ready apologist for the unreasonable demands of the money power.  It is his pleasure in presenting petitions and memorials to this House to tell us how many millions of money are represented therein, that, in his opinion, being a sufficient passport to the highest possible consideration that could be awarded them.

In that remarkable effort the gentleman took occasion to step aside from the consideration of the main subject to pay his respects to the proceedings of conventions recently held in two of the principal cities in the State of Illinois.  In the start I beg leave to say to the gentleman, with all due respect for his ability, that the gentlemen who took leading parts in these conventions held in the cities of Bloomington and Chicago are his peers in all that goes to make up a good, devoted, and patriotic citizen.  They have at heart the welfare of the country and her people as much as the gentleman can possibly have, and I think are possessed of as intelligent an appreciation of the demands of the situation as he.  And judging from the number of petitions that have reached Congress from New York and other eastern States, I believe these men of the West are in closer sympathy with the masses of the East upon this question of currency than many of their Representatives upon this floor.  The most determined opposition to this fair and equitable legislation comes from those, Mr. Speaker, whose interest it is to have continued in existence a single legal-tender currency, which has been artificially enhanced in value by unwise legislation.  The friends of this legislation are the people of the country.  It is in truth the people's measure;  but the perverted vision of the gentleman from New York allows him to see as bondholders only the hard-handed working men and women of New York and other States, whose deposits in the savings-banks are to a large extent invested in bonds, the widows, orphans, and unmarried women, whose all is invested in national banks.  "These," he says, "are the real bondholders."  A simple glance at these statements is sufficient to demonstrate their falsity.

As to the national banks, it is true they are the holders of our bonds and as a consequence we regret to admit are the consistent and persistent opponents of this bill.  As to these others to whom the gentleman refers, I have only to say that they are of the people of this land, and, being willing to receive their pay in what was the legal coin of the country at the time of the contract, they are to-day in full sympathy with the people generally in their demands for that relief which they feel can be found in the proposed legislation.

Then, again, the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Chittenden] in a manner characteristic of the illiberal advocates of the money power, took occasion to "stop, ay pause in his magnificent flight," to comment for a moment upon an occurrence which took place in this House on the day preceding.  This remarkable occurrence, Mr. Speaker, which arrested the gentleman's attention consisted in my objection to printing in the Record a memorial from the Chamber of Commerce of New York upon the question of the remonetization of silver.  He charged that a great wrong had been done by denying this society a privilege to which in his opinion it was especially entitled.  In that step I acted solely in the interest of economy, and simply did what had been repeatedly done before and has been done time and anon since, and not through any want of respect or consideration for that society.

But the inordinate zeal of the gentleman, to which his discretion has more than once been made to succumb, most unkindly and falsely attributed my conduct to ignorance of the history of that society and expressed sorrow for the "inexperience and 'un wisdom' of any member who in view of the age and history of that institution could stand up and object to the printing of its petition in the Recordd."  In reply I would say to the gentleman that I had some knowledge of that society and of its age and great respectability, but that I considered it entitled to no less nor any more consideration in that respect than the many other associations and individuals whose petitions were refused a similar request, not from any want of respect, but, as was stated, to avoid incumbering the Record as well as to avoid the incurring of an entirely unnecessary expense.  While I am willing to accord to this society all that is due it on account of its age and worth in other respects, I cannot award to it that soundness and correctness in its views upon the great question at issue which the gentleman claims in its behalf.

In view of the fact, too, Mr. Speaker, that it has existed so long, and will likely survive for years to come, and in view also of the other fact, that the gentleman himself is one of its most prominent members, it might have been as well to have committed the task of delivering its eulogy to other times and other hands.  I further assure the gentleman that I shall honor that society for what it has done in the past, and shall respect it in view of the great expectations we may justly form of it in the future, and while I do this I trust the gentleman may never again so far forget himself as to "stop" in his direct course and turn aside for the purpose of doing injustice to one who did not deserve it in any aspect of the case.  If, when I have had the benefit of his age and experience, I am able to practice no more wisdom that he has shown in this instance, I shall feel, Mr. Speaker, that it will be my misfortune to be compelled to look back upon a misimproved past.  We are grateful, indeed, to the Chamber of Commerce of New York for all that it did for Chicago in the time of her misfortune.  That city has arisen from her ashes and like the golden phœnix will soar to a height which will excite worthy emulation in all the great cities of the land.  In her pride and prosperity her good citizens will never cease to hold in grateful recollection those kind friends who came to her relief in the time of her direst need.

The gentleman has attempted to rob the charity of the chamber of commerce of its merit by attempting to lay its recipient under obligations that would involve a sacrifice of conscience as well as principle.  He may tauntingly charge "that the scores of millions which his denounced Shylock friends loaned to Chicago have been hopelessly lost and squandered in Quixotic adventures;"  but I assure him that a better day is coming, that the pall which now hangs so heavily over city and country alike will be dispelled by the legislation we propose, but which will grow darker and altogether fatal, we fear, if the financial views he advocates become the policy of this nation.  His efforts would be fatal to the conversion of Quixotic ventures into grand and glorious realities.  But, Mr. Speaker, the people at large and their Representatives here comprehend the problem presented for solution and to-day we know that remonetization is all but an accomplished fact.  It is the result, too, of cool and calm deliberation, and not a sentiment peculiar to the West, nor the result entirely of the general distress that now prevails everywhere.  The people of all sections and a large majority of their Representatives here favor it as legitimate, right, and proper legislation, which always aims at doing the greatest good to the greatest number.  And in this position I believe that each of its supporters upon this floor is acting in strict accordance with his own honest and intelligent convictions and not, as alleged by the gentleman from New York, giving support to this bill through fear of being burned in effigy at home.  As for myself, I am with the gentleman on one branch of the financial question, and I know of no power this side of omnipotence that could induce me to vote against my honest, well-founded convictions, and so I believe of every other member of this House.  Convinced, then, that the bill under consideration is in the right direction, I give it my most hearty support.

Coinage of Silver Dollars.

Mr. Hatcher [Robert Anthony Hatcher (1819-1886), New Madrid Missouri, D.;  studied law, admitted to the bar].  Mr. Speaker, so much has been said and written about the measure now pending before Congress, "providing for the coinage of standard silver dollars, and restoring the monetary function thereof," that it is almost beyond human ingenuity to advance new ideas and arguments in support thereof, which have not been already stated in some shape or form.  But the question in all its bearings is of such vital importance, involving the welfare of the people and the prosperity of this country, that I would be derelict of my duties to my constituents were I to remain silent.

I shall endeavor to treat this subject from a practical point of view, and my remarks shall have the merit of brevity.  Not the least of the sad calamities our last civil war entailed upon us was the issue of an irredeemable paper currency.  It was a war measure, a necessity which knows no law, a measure which could not be re-enacted in time of peace without amending the Constitution.  The paper thus issued was made legal tender, that is, lawful money.

In forming the Constitution the States conferred upon the United States the right "to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coins."  The States reserved to themselves the right to make gold and silver a legal tender for all debts.  Gold and silver, then, are our only constitutional money.  Silver was the coin of the colonies long before the Constitution itself was adopted.  It follows, then, that we cannot demonetize either gold or silver without an amendment to the Constitution.  Silver was the time-honored coin of our fathers, and, according to official information, the total amount of silver coined up to 1873 was $169,723,000.  Besides, there was in circulation many millions of the Spanish and Mexican dollars, which by law were made a legal tender and which formed no small portion of our currency.  Silver was then the standard of value in this and most other countries of both hemispheres.

On the strength and credit of the silver dollar which had gladdened the eyes of past generations prosperity reigned throughout the land.  Commerce and industries, with slight intervals, flourished;  the farmers secured fair prices for their products.  We added twenty-three States to the Union;  enlarged our public domain by the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida;  we fought the war of 1812 and the Mexican war, and acquired Texas and California and adjacent Territories, in whose bowels are hidden immeasurable treasures of the precious metals.  It was, indeed, the era of good feeling and plenty while silver and gold coin were freely circulating with us.  We were then a prosperous nation.  After the late war between the North and South began, the Government, unable to borrow money at home or abroad, was driven to the necessity to issue its own notes.  It declared them a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except duties on imports and interest on the public debt in the shape of United States bonds.  These notes, commonly called greenbacks, whether issued illegally or not, must be brought up to their full face value and should be made as good and valuable for every use and purpose of the Government as gold and silver coin.

Under the pernicious policy pursued by three consecutive republican administrations, backed by the moneyed aristocracy of the East, and sustained by congressional republican legislation, the volume of our paper currency was steadily contracted, and the national debt was reduced with a break-neck speed to the utter disregard of an impoverished, tax-ridden people, staggering under the weight of excessive taxation, and while more or less still suffering from the losses sustained by the war.  It was done like all class legislation fostered by the republican party, at the expense of the great masses of the people, the producers, for the benefit of the few, the capitalists and bondholders.  Our paper currency thus enhanced in value, its purchasing power, of course, was augmented accordingly.  Hence the values of land, houses, products of all kinds, wages, and nearly everything marketable shrank and diminished proportionately;  and the large debtor class (unfortunately by far the most numerous of our people) find themselves unable to meet the stern demand of an inexorable creditor.  And why ?  By reason of the joint operation of the contraction of currency and the demonetization of silver, whereby the proceeds of their lands, their products, if offered for sale, yield to-day 50 per cent. less than at the time they became debtors, when the fatal pruning process on our finances had not yet commenced.  To be sure, the purchasing power of money has doubled because the amount of our so-called paper money is gradually to be decreased and the functions of silver coin crippled, the former by the so-called resumption act of January 14, 1875, the latter by the infamous demonetization act of 1873.  Both these acts proved to be the Pandora box for the American people fraught with untold evils and woes.  What the one failed to accomplish the other effectually finished.  Both these measures, in my humble judgment, were the portentous guide-post to our present financial prostration, and unless speedily repealed will lead this nation into inevitable ruin.

By way of practical illustration of my statement as to the relation between the debtor classes and the creditors, let us suppose for instance:  Roe owes Doe a ba1ance of $3,000 on his farm, which he purchased six years ago.  Silver was then as good as gold, nay, from 2 to 3 per cent. better than gold.  Roe was then earning $4 a day.  Since or by the passage of the resumption act gold was virtually made the standard value;  silver cheapened, has been denounced and proscribed until values have fallen and shrunk fully 50 per cent., so that Roe with the same exertions can only make $2 a day.  Consequently he must pay Doe just twice as many days' labor for the amount due on his farm as he thought he would have to pay when he bought the farm.  Days' wages, as we all know, are measured by money or its equivalent.  Gold having become scarce in this country, being almost exclusively in the hands of the speculators and money-changers, its purchasing power has been doubled.  Thus $4 in gold pays you for two days labor instead of only one, when Roe bought his farm.  And this is the reason why the rich men out of debt ---the creditor classes, foremost of whom are the bondholders--- are opposed to silver.  They want to retain the single gold standard, because gold doubles the value of the debts due them.  While they profit by the enhancement in the value of money, it lays a burden upon the masses of the people, the laboring-men and the farmers.

Mr. Speaker, silver and gold have been the metallic money from time immemorial, and, as stated before, silver was the money of the colonies and is the money of our Constitution.  Silver is emphatically the money of the people, the coin of daily life.  The standard value of the silver dollar up to 1873 was 412½ grains troy, and was a full legal tender for all debts, public and private.  Like gold, its coinage was unlimited.  The relative value of silver and gold, if the silver dollar of 412.5 grains is again coined as contemplated by the pending bill, and the gold dollar remains at 25.8 grains, will be 15.98 parts of standard silver for 1 part of standard gold.

But in France, Italy, Switzerland, and a few other states comprising the Latin union, the relative value is 15½ of silver to 1 of gold.  From this it will be seen that we undervalue our own silver nearly one-half grain compared to those states;  and yet the silver five-franc piece (which is the unit of value in France) is equal in value to the gold five-franc piece, and there is said to be more gold in France today than in England and Germany together.  And again, there is a large excess of silver over gold coins in France.  It is true that one of the reasons why silver is at par with gold in France and certain other states, is because they have discontinued to coin silver, save subsidiary coins.  But, mark this, suspension of coining silver was ordered not because they have enough or too much of it, but to guard against its depreciation threatened by the sudden influx of silver from Germany.  Moreover, it should be borne in mind that said states are possessed of an immense supply of silver coins that we cannot for years acquire.  Granted that with our present coinage facilities at the utmost we strike $50,000,000 per year, it will take at least fifteen years for us to acquire an amount equal to theirs at the present time.  And if they, with their enormous amount of silver coins in circulation can keep silver at par with gold at the ratio of 15.5 to 1, why cannot we with a very scanty inadequate supply maintain that par at the ratio of 15.98 to 1 ?  Gold and silver in bullion, uncoined, are commodities, and like other commodities will fluctuate in value;  their value being regulated by the law of supply and demand.

When silver was very scarce in this country and worth more in the market than gold, it was thought that we could not afford to pay in silver.  Soon after it happened that Germany, in 1871, demonetized its silver, in consequence of which at least $350,000,000 were thrown out of circulation and offered for sale upon the money-markets of the world.  Japan had also demonetized silver, while in some other countries silver coin has been partially expelled from circulation by paper money.  Its market value depreciated at once.  Now that silver has become more plentiful and we can afford to resume its coinage, we are told that it has been demonetized by Congress.

Let us inquire how this demonetization was brought about;  if it was done in a fair, open, and honest way;  if it was constitutional.  The origin of the attempt to demonetize silver in this country dates back to the passage of the so-called mint or coinage act, approved February 12, 1873.  The bill originated in the House, by which the value of the silver of the old standard silver dollar was reduced from 412.5 to 384, because of its excessive value over gold;  the Senate, however, instead of reducing the weight of the silver dollar of 412½ grains did, in fact, increase the same to 420 grains.

The way it was done was recently, for the first time, exposed in the halls of the Senate Chamber by Senators Beck and Hereford;  and without repeating here their statement, I may be permitted to state briefly that a silver dollar increased by 7.5 grains' weight was substituted for the one issued at that time, which was worth as bullion 3.5 cents more than the gold dollar and 7.5 cents more than two half dollars;  in other words, the silver dollar of 412½ grains had a greater intrinsic than nominal value.  The new silver dollar of 420 grains was made what was called a trade-dollar.

The bill as originated in the House and thus materially changed in the Senate was put on its final passage without any explanations on the part of those who had charge of the bill, and who must have been cognizant of the changes made.  No opportunity for discussion was afforded, and thus it passed toward the last days of an expiring Congress, when measures of doubtful propriety or iniquity have often been pushed through.  I had not then the honor of being a member of Congress.  How Congress permitted itself to be duped, cable-towed in a measure of such vast importance, remains a mystery in the annals of modern legislation.

It is said, misfortunes never come singly.  After the standard silver dollar was banished from our mints, the Revised Statutes took another step toward demonetizing the silver dollar by repealing all acts upon the subject of silver coins and of its legal-tender function.  In revising the statutes of the United States it was agreed that no change in any way, so as to alter the sense of existing laws, was to be made.  The revisers were not authorized to make any change in the laws, but to preserve the law exactly as it stood.  The approval of the two Houses was given to the work upon the assumption that the laws had not been changed, the laws as in force on the 1st day of December, 1873.  But behold !  Section 3586 does declare that "the silver coins of the United States shall be legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment."  This means the demonetizing of all the silver coins of the United States.  Previous to that time we had, strictly speaking, not demonetized the old standard silver dollar.  We had discontinued its coinage, and that is all.  Even after the act of February 12, 1873, every outstanding silver dollar, and there are still several millions of them in circulation, was a legal tender of all debts, public and private.  Can it be that the insertion in the Revised Statutes of a provision altering the existing law was done by mistake or accident ?  Or was it done by cupidity, by conspiracy, by fraud ?

I am inclined to believe, Mr. Speaker, that both the act of February 12, 1873, and the wording of section 3586 of the Revised Statutes were accomplished---

If it is true, as argued, that gold and silver coin are our only constitutional money, and that we cannot make paper representatives of this coin a legal tender without amending the organic law, is it not bound to follow that we cannot demonetize either gold or silver coin without amending the Constitution ?  If the Constitution determines the character of our money, of our coin, we certainly have never demonetized silver, despite the systematic attempts practiced upon a confiding people in the way and manner aforesaid.  We have ceased to coin it, that is, of the old standard, and if Congress orders it to be coined again, as we are in duty bound, it will be restored to the old standing and prestige it once enjoyed in the money family.  It will then be a full legal tender, not only to the paltry sum of $5, for that would not meet the necessities of the people, but a legal tender to any amount.

The advantages sought to be gained through unjust and unconstitutional legislative enactments for the discontinuance of the coinage of the "dollar of our fathers" and destroying its legal-tender quality were in the interest and for the benefit of the bondholders.  It was then known that silver was flowing into this country from the newly discovered mines of Nevada and Colorado, and that the German Empire began to demonetize her silver, whereby a serious decline in the value of silver was likely to take place.  It was then apprehended by the far-seeing, keen-scenting bankers and capitalists of Europe, where most of our bonds are held, that the sudden influx of silver in this country would induce us to pay our obligations in coin that would cost us less and was more attainable than gold, and that by a free coinage of silver we might succeed in bringing silver at par with gold;  and, moreover, that the value of the American bonds would depreciate.

A prominent Senator, Mr. Jones, from Nevada, whose practical knowledge of the so-called silver question is conceded by all, in a recent interview as published in the National Republican expresses his views as follows:

Silver is not produced in sufficient quantity, and nowhere exists in sufficient quantity, beyond current consumption in the arts and the supply needed for Asia, to be thrown on our markets in sums large enough to threaten injury to our finance, industry, or commerce.  During the year 1877, India, Japan, and China received from San Francisco, Southampton, Marseilles, and Venice, in the course of trade, $105,000,000.  This is $25,000,000 more than the production of the entire world during the same year.

Which statement, if but approximately true, goes far to prove that the hue and cry raised by these patriotic bondholders of Europe and their allies in Wall street and elsewhere about flooding the country is simply preposterous.  Like the Pharisees, they hold up their hands in holy horror and denounce the advocates of constitutional silver coin as repudiators, financial quacks, victims of the silver mania.  And why ?  Because we propose to pay their bonds, principal and interest, no longer exclusively in gold, which is the money of the rich, the few, but to pay according to the express terms of the contract as provided by law.  When the Government at the commencement of the war needed money, it found itself unable to borrow money at home or abroad.  It was therefore driven to the necessity of issuing its own notes.  These notes by law were made a legal tender for debt, and were not convertible into money.  Everybody, poor and rich, had to take them because they were compelled to take them.  These United States notes of which there were in circulation upto November 1, 1877, $354,490,000 form a part of our non-interest-bearing debt.  Some people exchanged these non-interest-bearing notes for the bonds of the United States because they preferred to have the obligations of the Government, which promised interest as well as principal at a certain fixed period, an inducement the former did not offer.  The capitalist who took these bonds became at once the creditor of the United States.  He did not pay in gold for them, but paid in greenbacks when it took from $1.30 to $2.80 in paper to buy one gold dollar.  What were the conditions of these bonds ?  What did we promise to the creditor ?  Did we promise to pay in gold ?

Any one before he buys a bond can see for himself what are the terms the conditions of the same, the obligation of the United States.  These bonds were issued under various acts of various dates and varied according to the terms of the contract.  Prior to 1869 it was held even by leading republicans of Congress that the bonds issued up to that time, with slight exceptions, were payable in lawful money.  The late Thaddeus Stevens, the head and front of the republican party of his time, on July 17, l868, indulged in the following vigorous language on that question:

House of Representatives
Friday, July 17, 1868.

The Committee of the Whole resumed the consideration of the funding bill.

Mr. Thaddeus Stevens.  I understood the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ross] who first spoke upon this subject to say that he understood that our outstanding bonds should be paid according to the principle of the New York platform.  What is that platform ?

Mr. Ross.  To pay the five-twenties in lawful money.

Mr. Stevens.  You mean by "lawful money" ---

Mr. Ross.  Greenbacks;  that is your doctrine and mine.

Mr. Stevens.  I hold to the Chicago platform, and, as I understand it, to the New York platform, upon these bonds;  that these bonds shall be paid just according to the original contract.

Mr. Farnsworth.  According to the law.

Mr. Stevens.  What was that law ?  That bonds of a certain amount should bear five per cent. interest in gold.  Now, up to the time that they fall due, we must pay them faithfully.  After they fall due they are payable in money, just as the gentleman understands "money," just as I understand it, just as we all understood it when we passed the law authorizing that loan;  just as it was a dozen times explained upon this floor by the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means when called upon by gentlemen to explain what it meant, and just as the whole House agreed that it meant.

I want to say that if this loan was to be paid according to the intimation of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ross]; —if I knew that any party in this country would go for paying in coin that which is payable in money, thus enhancing it one-half, if I knew there was such a platform and such a determination on the part of any party— I would vote on the other side, Frank Blair and all.  I would vote for no such swindle upon the taxpayers of this country.  I would vote for no such speculation in favor of the large bond-holders — the millionaires who took advantage of our folly in granting them coin payment of interest.  And I declare ---well, it is hard to say it--- but if even Frank Blair stood upon the platform paying the bonds according to contract, and the Republican candidates stood upon the platform of paying bloated speculators twice the amount which we agreed to pay them, then I would vote for Frank Blair, even if a worse man than Seymour headed the ticket.  That is all I want to say.

To remove all doubts that had existed on that question, the point, as usual, was stretched so far that for the bondholder's benefit the act of March 18, 1869, was passed by which it is declared that "the faith of the United States is solemnly pledged to the payment in coin, or its equivalent, of all obligations of the United States not bearing interest, known as United States notes, and of all the interest-bearing obligations of the United States, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue of any such obligation has expressly provided that the same may be paid in lawful money, or other currency than gold or silver."

This was simply an outrage upon the people.  A letter from the present Secretary of the Treasury, addressed to a gentleman in New York [March 20, 1868, to A. Mann, jr., Brooklyn Heights] has been recently brought to light which shows what his views on the payment of Government bonds were in 1868.  It cannot be published and read too often.  It is as follows:

Dear Sir:  I was pleased to receive your letter.  My personal interests are the same as yours, but, like you, I do not intend to be influenced by them.  My construction of the law is the result of careful examination, and I feel quite sure an impartial court would confirm it, if the case could be tried before a court.  I send you my views as fully stated in a speech.  Your idea is that we propose to repudiate or violate a promise when we offer to redeem the "principal" in legal-tenders.  I think the bondholder violates his promise when he refuses to take the same kind of money he paid for the bonds.  If the case is to be tested by the law, I am right; if it is to be tested by Jay Cooke's advertisements, I am wrong.  I hate repudiation or anything like it, but we ought not to be deterred from doing what is right by fear of undeserved epithets.  If under the law as it stands the holders of the five-twenties can only be paid in gold, then we are repudiators if we propose to pay otherwise.  If the bondholder can legally demand only the kind of money he paid, then he is a repudiator and extortioner to demand money more valuable than he gave.

Truly yours, John Sherman.

By the act of July 14, 1870, all bonds authorized under it, were payable in coin of the then standard value, not in gold but in "coin," in coin of the then standard value.  And according to the last monthly statement of the public debt issued by the Treasury Department there were about $783,000,000 of our bonded debt authorized by the act last cited as amended by a subsequent act of January 20, 1871.

Such then was the contract between the United States and its creditors.  Its language is clear and not ambiguous.  Both the act of 1869 and 1870 required payment in "coin."  And yet they are not happy, those poor creditors.  They would, if possible, like to see the word "gold" before "coin" inserted on their bonds, and have them paid in gold coin.  If, then, it is lawful to pay in silver coin, why not insist upon it that it should be done ?

Thew whole national legislation for years past has been in the interest of the capitalists and monopolies.  A high protective tariff was imposed upon the country in the interest of the few whereby the masses of the people, the producing classes, are indirectly taxed on the most necessary articles of life, as salt, iron, lumber, wool, &c.  State banks were taxed out of existence and national banks created, counting at present over twenty-one honored in numbers, and receiving in aggregate a bounty from the United States Treasury of some $20,000,000 per year.  Subsidies were granted to grasping corporations, giving them immense tracts of lands, larger in their total area than many of our States combined, and hundreds of millions of money were voted to them out of the pockets of a hard-toiling, debt-ridden people.  In short, a system of legalized robbery was inaugurated by which the rich became richer and the poor made poorer.

I have shown how by a series of legislative enactments, including the demonetizing of silver and the specie-resumption act, the nation's creditors and capitalists reaped benefit after benefit, not the least of which I might add here, was the funding of the national debt.  They, of all men, have the least right to complain when the public demand that the public debt shall be paid in silver as well as in gold, in accordance with the express terms of the contract.

The distinguished Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. James B. Beck] in his great speech alluded to before, throws such a flood of calcium light on the subject under discussion that I cannot resist the temptation to avail myself, among some other of his arguments, of the statement reproduced by him in that speech.  That statement gives a succinct history of all the bonds that were sold each year and the prices that were paid and the interest that was given, and from which it appears that the bondholders up to 1869 had received over $100,000,000 of profit before they even got the principal.  Here it is:

In 1862 the Government sold 6 per cent. 5/20 bonds to the amount of $60,982,450, and received for them greenbacks at their face, dollar for dollar.  The demand now is that these bonds shall be paid in gold at their face, and yet, owing to the depreciation of greenbacks at the time of their purchase, only $44,030,649 in gold was paid for them.  This makes a clear speculation of $16,951,801 in favor of the bondholder in this first transaction.  On this clear speculation the bondholders have received interest for eleven years, amounting to $11,187,188, which, added to its principal, makes the sum of $28,138,989 already received in that single transaction, for which not one dollar was ever paid.

In 1863 the Government sold of the same kind of bonds $160,987,550, for which it received an equal amount in greenbacks.  A standard authority placed the average price of gold during that year at $1.58 in currency.  It will thus be seen that these bonds cost their purchasers but $101,890,854 in gold, leaving a profit of $59,096,696, without including the interest.  For ten years, however, the Government has paid interest on this naked profit, this principal, without any consideration.  The interest thus paid amounts to $35,458,017, which, added to this fictitious principal, makes $94,555,713, now in the pockets of the bondholders on that year's operation, for which they never paid anything.

In 1864 the Government sold these bonds, amounting on their face to $381,292,250.  Again, the Government received only depreciated paper for these bond obligations, and at that time our currency was enormously depreciated, if tried by the gold standard.  The price of gold during that year was at an average of 201 in currency.  The sale of these bonds, therefore, which are now assumed to be gold bonds, only realized to the Government $189,697,636 in gold, less than one-half of their face value.  There was left to the capitalists, who speculated in them as purchasers, the immense profit of $191,594,614.  This was the amount of the broker's shave, and on it he has drawn interest from the people for ten years, amounting at this time to $114,956,768.  Add this to its principal, which stands as pure speculation, and we find that the bondholders have made as clear gain, as something for nothing, the sum of $306,551,382 on the one year's transaction of 1864.

In 1865 the Government sold bonds to the amount of $279,746,150, on which it suffered a discount of $71,532,060, at the hands of the capitalists.  The interest already paid by the people on this discount reaches $38,627,307, making this year's operation realize for the bondholders $110,159,367, for which not one cent was ever paid.

In 1866 the Government sold $124,914,400 of its bonds, for which it received depreciated paper currency amounting to $88,591,773 in gold, according to the then price of gold.  The difference between the face of these bonds and the amount they realized to the Government was $36,332,627.  Eight years' interest received on this shave amounts to $17,434,556.  Adding this interest and its principal together, and we find that the bondholders have received $53,757,183 out of this year's sale of bonds, for which not one dollar ever left their coffers or reached the United States Treasury.

In 1867 the Government sold of its bonds the immense sum of $421,469,550.  The purchasers paid for them $303,215,503, leaving a clear profit to them on the operation of $118,254,047.  Taking the interest on this profit for seven years, amounting to $49,661,694, already paid, and the speculators have in their pockets, if these bonds are to be paid in gold, the sum of $167,915,741 on this year's brokerage, and for which they never gave a farthing in consideration.

In 1868 the Government sold its bonds to the still further amount of $425,443,800.  Their purchasers paid $312,826,323 for them, clearing by that annual speculation the sum of $112,617,477.  Add six years' interest on this bonus, amounting to $40,542,288, to the bonus itself, and we find that these traffickers in a nation's perils have received in this operation $153,159,765 of the people's money, for which not the slightest equivalent was ever paid into the United States Treasury.

In addition to the foregoing 6 per cent. bonds, the Government, at different times, during the years mentioned, issued and sold $195,139,550 of bonds bearing 5 per cent.  They realized to the Government $122,957,410, thus leaving to the purchasers a net profit of $72,182,140.  Interest already paid on this profit amounts to $26,115,724, which, added to the profit itself, makes the sum of $98,297,864 as the amount now in the pockets of the bondholders growing out of their operations in the 5 per cent. bonds, and for which there is not the slightest consideration.

An account of the bondholders' clear profits arising from no investments at all, may therefore be stated in the following tabular form:

1862 ........................... $28,138,989
1863 .............................. 94,555,713
1864 ............................... 306,551,582
1865 .............................. 110,159,367
1866 ................................. 53,757,183
1867 .................................... 167,915,741
1868 .................................... 153,159,765
On account of 5 percent. bonds ............................................... 98,297,864
Total .......................................... 1,012,536,004.

---Wednesday, February 17, 1875, page 1403.  Senator Beck was quoting from a campaign speech of Senator Wolsey Voorhees

This statement, Mr. Beck assures us, was carefully and truthfully prepared.  It needs no comment.  To be sure, sir, the bondholders have no right to complain of any unfair treatment, or of derogation of their rights as public creditors, or of any violation of the public faith.

Suppose, Mr. Speaker, new gold mines, "bonanzas" yielding immense quantities of that precious metal, should be discovered in this country, or in Africa, or Australia, and in consequence thereof gold should become far more plentiful than silver is now, and the value of gold should depreciate so as to render silver more valuable, the bondholders would no longer be content with the payment of gold;  they would then insist on being paid in silver coin.

Sir, I do not believe in arousing the passions and prejudices of the people.  Far be it from me to array the poor against the rich, labor against capital.  Human history is full of the strifes between the poor and the rich, between the debtor and creditor, and human legislation is rife with experiments to limit the encroaching and merciless powers of capital.  Let capital cease to tax the patience of an impoverished people, and let the wealthy bear in mind that by the sweat of the face of the laboring-man their coffers are filling, and it was through their toil and sacrifices that the capitalists were enabled to reap those enormous profits on their bonds.

Another objection raised against the remonetization of silver is that it is too heavy, too inconvenient to handle for the daily routine of trade;  also, that, if this bill should pass, silver will be a less valuable currency than gold, and that the less valuable currency will drive gold from this country.  Neither of these assertions is true.  I have stated before that in France and certain other states silver coins and gold coins are at par, although there is more silver in circulation in those States than gold;  furthermore, that their stock of silver coins exceeds ours largely.  Now, then, if the coinage of the dollar of 412½ grains be restored and it be made a full legal-tender, its value will be at least equal to that of the greenback.  And the greenback, which has no intrinsic value, no circulation outside of the United States, and is but a limited legal-tender even in our own country, is now within 2 per cent. of par with gold.  Why should not silver money, which has intrinsic value and which circulates over the greater part of the world, rise at par with gold ?  Silver will not banish gold;  it is an inoffensive metal.  Gold did not vanish when greenbacks were worth less than fifty cents on the gold dollar;  there was gold enough for every day's requirement.

And finally those who object to silver on account of its weight need not handle it;  let them use gold or gold-edged paper.  The world has for over two thousand years used silver as a circulating medium, and I know of but one complaint:  that there was not enough of it.  Silver has been preferred to so-called paper money, to assignats, to scrips, and other kind of artificial promissory notes which from time to time have brought about much misery and bankruptcy upon so many nations.

After the memorable contest of Andrew Jackson with the Bank of the United States the coin currency was revived by the passage of the bill for "equalizing the value of gold and silver and legalizing the tender of foreign coins of both metals."

Thomas Hart Benton, who has endeared himself to the people of my State and whose memory is still cherished by all American patriots, shows in his book, Thirty Years' View, volume 1, page 469, writing of the revival of the coin currency, that the silver dollar was kept at par with the gold dollar in several large countries for over three centuries.  He says:

The difficulty of adjusting this value so that neither metal should expel the other had been the stumbling block for a great many years;  and now this difficulty seemed to be as formidable as ever.  Refined calculations were gone into, scientific light was sought, history was rummaged back to the times of the Roman Empire, and there seemed to be no way of getting to a concord of opinion either from the lights of science, the voice of history, or the result of calculations.  The author of this View had (in his speeches on the subject) taken up the question in a practical point of view, regardless of history, and calculations, and the opinions of bank officers, and, looking to the actual and equal circulation of the two metals in different countries, he saw that this equality and actuality of circulation had existed for above three hundred years in the Spanish dominions of Mexico and South America, where the proportion was 16 to 1.  Taking his stand upon this single fact as the practical test which solved the question, all the real friends of the gold currency soon rallied to it.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a question of politics but a question of patriotism.  The people demand more money to meet the increasing demands of a growing population, to expand their commerce, to foster industries, to encourage enterprise, to repair the waste and devastation our late civil war inflicted upon the land.  The people demand the coinage of silver money as of yore, and I know of no greater pleasure, of no higher duty, than to obey the will of the people.

We are admonished that, should this bill become a law, the bonds now held in Europe will be returned to this country.  I am not at all alarmed at this.  On the contrary, I would esteem it a blessing if all our bonds were owned by our own people, so that the millions of dollars that annually deplete the United States Treasury for the payment of interest and sent abroad would remain here and swell the volume of a contracted currency.  The bondholders did not take our bonds out of sympathy or patriotism, virtues not peculiar to capital;  they took them because they thought it a safe and profitable investment that paid a higher rate of interest than elsewhere.  I am assured by a gentleman who knows of what he speaks that Germany, who holds the larger part of our debt, grew rich by the large profits our bonds yielded.  We still pay, and with each returning year will have to pay, more than $100,000,000 of tribute to the foreign bondholder.

It is England's boast that her immense debt she owes to her own people, and France borrowed the milliards wherewith to pay the cost of her war with Germany likewise from her own people.  Far better, then, for us to get our debt, our bonds, at home, instead of draining this country of her specie to satisfy European capitalists, and, in the language of an eminent financial writer, "so dispose our financial affairs that the debt, instead of being the gold mine of the rich and the few, shall become the savings-bank of the poor and many."

Before dismissing this subject I shall not omit to declare myself in favor of making our legal-tender note receivable in payment of duties on imports for its full face value.  Some such measure would at once solve the embarrassing question of keeping silver at par with gold and counteract its fluctuating tendencies, and thus allay all apprehensions that haunt the vision of those who insist that the less valuable currency will drive out the more valuable one.

What would be thought of a commercial house or of a private banking institution that permits its own paper to be discounted, and then refused to receive the same at the full face value in payment for all purposes pertaining to its business ?  Would such a refusal not be condemned as sharp practice ?

We know that the gold derived from the proceeds of import duties is applied for the payment of the principal and interest of the bonds, while the people must content themselves with paper money that is at a discount compared with gold.  Shall we discriminate any longer in that way ?  I hold that the money which is good for the people is good enough for the bondholder.

By making greenbacks receivable for duties on imports, by placing silver on the same footing with gold in restoring it to its former legal-tender functions, the demand for gold in this country will grow "small by degrees and beautifully less;"  the demand for it will be confined mostly to our dealings with foreign countries.

The amendments to the House bill as adopted by the Senate I cannot approve.  The free-coinage clause stricken out, the amount of silver coin to be limited, have shorn the bill of most of its vital features.  While I shall vote for the Senate amendments, I shall only vote for the bill as now before us lest its adoption should be endangered and the delay caused by further discussion and disagreements might prove fatal, trusting to the future for wholesome relief.

Another cause of our present financial distress is the act of January 14, 1875, to provide for the resumption of specie payment.  This was the crowning act of a series of laws passed in the interest of the rich capitalist, the gold-bullionist.  The passage of this law has done more than anything else to unsettle values, to destroy confidence, to cause the sorest distress.  With a country blessed with bountiful harvests, we behold to-day general stagnation and dismay.  Millions of workingmen claiming the right to work are unable to find employment and are forced into demoralizing idleness.  We find enterprise checked, industry paralyzed, commerce suspended.  The face of the country has changed from comfort and prosperity to a scene of distress and decline.  The producer finds no remunerative market for the products of his labor, and capital lies idle in the banks of our commercial cities.

The Secretary of the Treasury but a few days ago in his letter to this House startled the country by the announcement that the revenues up to this period of the present fiscal year had fallen off nearly $5,000,000 below the estimate, and this deficiency has to be made up either by a proportionate reduction of the annual appropriation or by increased taxation.  Think of it !  During a state of profound tranquility, with a country teeming with plenty, the thumb-screw of taxation is threatened to be tightened on the languishing industries of the country.

I do not desire to argue any further.

The remonetization of silver, the repeal of the resumption act, the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and the substituting of greenbacks in lieu thereof with full legal-tender quality in payment of all debts, public and private, except such obligations as are by the terms of the original contract under which they were issued expressly payable in coin, all these measures will afford relief to the country.

Necessity compels it, justice requires it, the people demand it.

Coinage of Silver Dollar.

Mr. Speaker, but for the recent action of the Legislature of the State which I have the honor in part to represent, and of which for her high intelligence and honorable fame I am proud to be a Representative, I should content myself with simply voting upon the important question now under consideration;  but as the State has by a resolution of her legislative bodies, which has been spread upon the journals of both Houses of Congress, formally requested her Senators and Representatives to oppose the passage of this bill, I feel constrained, from respect to her sovereignty, to state, as briefly as I may, the reasons which impel me to decline compliance with her request.  In doing this I shall not stop to inquire into the origin of the resolution or the purposes of its originators.  I am willing to concede that they were proper.  While a Representative is directly responsible only to his immediate constituents, and the brief tenure of his office makes that responsibility practically available to them, the request of a State, when intelligently made and clearly expressed, is entitled to the respectful consideration of all her citizens.

Other resolutions, containing no request, but merely an expression of opinion that nothing should be done by Congress looking to the repudiation of the public debt, and that there should be no postponement of the time fixed for resumption, accompany the one to which I have particularly referred, and I shall endeavor to notice them before I close my remarks.  What does the pending bill propose ?  Simply the restoration of the standard silver dollar of 412½ grains to the place it occupied in the coinage of the country for more than eighty years prior to 1873, with the unlimited legal-tender quality which it always possessed.  Was that coin wrongfully demonetized ?  If it was, it should be restored, unless there is shown to be some overruling necessity or policy which should prevent.

To ascertain the true state of the case, the recital of a little of the legislative history of the country is necessary.  Prior to 1869 the several acts of Congress under which the different classes of the bonds of the United States were issued prescribed their payment in some cases in lawful money, which embraced coin and greenbacks, and the demand notes of the Government, which were declared by statute to be lawful money, and in other cases in coin alone, which, I assume, included the gold coins of the United States and the standard silver dollar.

On the 18th of March, 1869, Congress passed the act entitled "An act to strengthen the public credit," in which it was provided:

That in order to remove any doubt as to the purpose of the government to discharge all just obligations to the public creditors, and to settle conflicting questions and interpretations of the laws by virtue of which such obligations have been contracted, it is hereby provided and declared that the faith of the United States is solemnly pledged to the payment in coin or its equivalent of all the obligations of the United States not bearing interest, known as United States notes, and of all the interest-bearing obligations of the United States, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue of any such obligation has expressly provided that the same may be paid in lawful money or other currency than gold and silver.  But none of said interest-bearing obligations not already due shall be redeemed or paid before maturity unless at such time United States notes shall be convertible into coin at the option of the holder, or unless at such time bonds of the United States bearing a lower rate of interest than the bonds to be redeemed can be sold at par in coin.  And the United States also solemnly pledges its faith to make provision at the earliest practicable period for the redemption of the United States notes in coin.

On the 14th of July, 1870, and by an amendment thereof January 20, 1871, by which the act was so enlarged as to embrace all the bonds of the United States, it was enacted in the first section of what is called the funding law---

That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to issue, in a sum or sums not exceeding in the aggregate $200,000,000, coupon or registered bonds of the United States, in such form as he may prescribe, and of denominations of $50 or some multiple of that sum, redeemable in coin of the present standard value, at the pleasure of the United States after ten years from the date of their issue, and bearing interest payable semi-annually in such coin at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum;  also a sum or sums not exceeding in the aggregate $300,000,000 of like bonds the same in all respects, but payable at the pleasure of the United States after fifteen years from the date of their issue and bearing interest at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum;  also a sum or sums not exceeding in the aggregate $1,000,000,000 of like bonds, same in all respects, but payable at the pleasure of the United States after twenty years from the date of their issue and bearing interest at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum;  all of which said several classes of bonds and the interest thereon shall be exempt from the payment of all taxes or duties of the United States as well as from taxation in any form by or under State, municipal, or local authority;  and the said bonds shall have set forth and expressed upon their face the above-specified conditions, and shall, with coupons, be made payable at the Treasury of the United States.

The bonds issued under this act amounting to over seven hundred and eighty-three millions are identical in form, and the following language varying only as to date, denomination, rate of interest, &c., is written on the face of each:

The United States of America are indebted to the bearer in the sum of $50.
This bond is issued in accordance with the provisions of an act of Congress entitled An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt, approved July 14, 1870, as amended by an act approved January 20, 1871, and is redeemable at the pleasure of the United States, after the 1st day of July, 1907, in coin of the standard value of the United States on said July 14, 1870, with interest in such coin from the day of the date hereof at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum, payable quarterly on the 1st day of October, January, April, and July in each year.  The principal and interest are exempt from the payment of all taxes or duties of the United States, as well as from taxation in any form by or under State, municipal, or local authority

Thus the law stood in 1873 when the silver dollar was demonetized.  The coin of the standard value of the United States at that time consisted of the gold dollar at the standard weight of 25.8 grains, the three-dollar piece, the half eagle, the eagle, and double eagle, all of corresponding weight to the dollar;  and the silver dollar at the standard weight of 412½ grains, all which were unlimited legal tender for every purpose.

This is a precise summary of the law affecting this question, and in view of it the simple inquiry is whether this silver dollar should of right be restored to its old and honored place and be permitted to discharge the functions which so long pertained to it.

By way of objection it is urged that it would be the practical repudiation of one-tenth of the entire bonded debt of the United States, and of all other existing public and private indebtedness, because silver bullion is now at a discount of 10 per cent. as compared with gold.

Second.  That it would flood the country with a debased and depreciated currency, by which the laborer would be cheated out of that proportion of the avails of his labor, and the creditor of his just due.

Third.  And that the bimetallic or double standard is impracticable, if not impossible, in this country.

These are the prominent claims made by the opponents of the bill and embrace directly or incidentally all the minor ones that have been put forth.

First.  The obvious answer to the first is, that it is not repudiation to discharge an obligation strictly according to its terms.  If the bonds of the United States under the several laws by which they were authorized to be issued, and under the act of March 18, 1869, in which legislative construction is given to those laws, are payable in silver coin as well as gold, the charge of repudiation is baseless and unjust;  nay, it is utterly false.

What was the opinion of Dr. Linderman, Director of the Mint, one of the most strenuous advocates for the adoption of the single gold standard ?  Here is his language, found on page 114 of his Gold and Legal Tender:

On the 14th of July, 1870, an act to authorize the refunding of the national debt was approved, which authorized the sale, exchange, and issue of prescribed amounts of 5, 4.5, and 4 per cent. bonds, redeemable in "coin of the present standard value," at the pleasure of the United States, after certain periods named, the interest payable in such coin.  Strictly construed, the words "coin of the present standard value" as used in this act must be regarded as meaning the full legal-tender coins which at the time represented the money of account;  that is, all the gold coins coined at the rate of 25.8 grains, nine-tenths fine, to the dollar, and the silver dollar of 412½ grains of the same fineness.

What says the London Times, one of the organs of the British gold bullionists, in a recent article ?

It could in no sense be called repudiation if silver were made the sole standard of the United States to-morrow.

And the London Economist, another of their special financial advocates:

If, at the present moment, America would become a silver country, the interest and principal of her obligations would be paid in silver.  The evil, of course, would not be what the momentary circumstances of the market would now suggest.  Silver would not be at fifty-four pence per ounce if America was a country with a sole silver currency.  So large a demand as her coin requirements would send up the price very rapidly ---perhaps to its old amount.

What is the opinion of the distinguished Senator from Georgia, [Mr. Hill] as expressed in his recent speech in opposition to the bill ?

The act of 1870 expressly says that this bond is redeemable in coin.  Silver at that time was of as much value as gold, and the best way for everybody to meet this question is to meet it according to the facts.  There is not a judge on Earth who would not hold that "coin" in the act of 1869 and the act of 1870 meant gold and silver.

And the equally distinguished Senator from Maine, [Mr. Blaine] who also opposed the bill:

But I must say, Mr. President, that the specific demand for the payment of our bonds in gold coin and in nothing else, comes with an ill grace from certain quarters.  European criticism is leveled against us and hard names are hurled at us across the ocean, for simply daring to state that the letter of our law declares the bonds to be payable in standard coin of July 14, 1870;  expressly and explicitly declared so, and declared so in the interest of the public creditor, and the declaration inserted in the very body of the eight hundred million of bonds that have been issued since that date.  Beyond all doubt the silver dollar was included in the standard coins of that public act.

I also cite the opinion of Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, the present chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as expressed in a speech delivered by him in the Senate December 5, 1867:

Our own gold and silver coins always have been and are still defined by law to contain in each denomination, be it a dime, a dollar or an eagle, a certain named weight of silver or gold.  They are the ultimates of value, the money of the Government.

And in that connection he quotes from Locke as follows:

All contracts or engagements are to be deemed fully discharged and satisfied by payment of the specific quantity or sum of money agreed upon, without having any regard to the value of money with respect to other things at the different times of contracting and discharging of debts.

These declarations and opinions of the enemies of the bill are in perfect accord with the law regulating the payment of duties on imports and the payment of taxes and other debts due to the United States, as appears from sections 3473 and 3474 of the Revised Statutes, which provide in the former section that "all duties on imports shall be paid in gold and silver coin only," &c., "and all other debts and demands becoming due to the United States shall be paid in gold and silver coin," &c., and in the latter, "no gold and silver other than coin of standard fineness of the United States shall be receivable in payment of dues to the United States," with certain exceptions relating to foreign coins.

They are also in accord with the practice of the Treasury Department, under its interpretation of those sections, as appears from the published answers of its officers to inquiries addressed to them for information.

On this point I shall content myself that I have sufficiently answered the objection from the law, and from the mouths of the friends of the objectors.

Second.  In the second place it is said the recoinage of the standard silver dollar will fill the country with a currency largely debased, which will only pay 90 per cent. of existing debts to the creditor, and only purchase in the hands of the laborer, who will be obliged to receive it at par, the same short percentage in value of necessaries for his family.  If this is true, it is indeed a grievous wrong which cannot be too severely condemned.  Sir, what evidence have we of it, except the unsupported declaration of those who make it ?  None in the world.  In my opinion it is absolutely untrue.  I admit that from a combination of causes silver bullion is now at a discount as compared with gold.  This has been so since 1873.  But how is it with silver coin ?  We have now more than forty millions in circulation in this country as subsidiary coin at an intrinsic value about 7 per cent. below the standard dollar.  Does it not pass current at the full value of other money and purchase precisely the same in necessaries ?  No one can question that.

The depreciation in silver bullion is the same in Europe as here.  Yet England has ninety-three millions of subsidiary coin, of less intrinsic value than our own, in active circulation among her people, supplying all the uses of money in sums below $20, and every shilling of it is given and received at par with gold.  Germany has as much, besides a considerable amount that is full legal tender;  France more than three hundred millions, a large part of which is legal tender, and so with every nation in Europe, all of which circulates at par with gold;  and the standard of all their silver coin is 12½ grains to the dollar less than that of our standard dollar.

The Mexican and Spanish dollars of 417 grains are subject to the same conditions of depreciation with respect to bullion, and notwithstanding they are foreign coins, and therefore under the law have no legal-tender quality, they are now quoted at 99.8 per cent in gold.  These facts seem entirely conclusive against the claim that the full legal-tender standard dollar will be a depreciated coin even with bullion at its present discount.

Much clamor, which I will notice for a moment, has been raised over the trade-dollar, the market value of which, I believe, is now about 1 percent. below a gold dollar.  It is true this contains 420 grains, an excess of something less than 2 per cent. above the standard dollar.  It was coined for exportation to China and Japan, and not for circulation here.  It is not now even a limited legal tender, but a mere commodity, and yet in the face of the depreciation of which we have heard so much, it is worth within 1 per cent. of par in gold.  It is said that mill-owners have purchased them at a discount and compelled their operatives to take them at par in payment for their wages.  My friend, the senior Senator from Connecticut, [Mr. Eaton] in a recent speech against this bill, prepared with great care and delivered with his usual ability, mentioned an instance of it in which a manufacturer residing in his county, who has fifteen hundred people working for him, and whose monthly pay-roll is $40,000, last month purchased forty thousand of these dollars at ninety-seven cents and paid them to his workmen as full dollars.  If that is so, I think my friend will agree with me that it is time we had a better silver dollar, and I will guarantee him that when we get the "recrowned and rehabilitated" standard dollar, no such advantage can be taken of the workingman.

I regret that the manufacturer who would be guilty of so mean an act and the operatives who were so ignorant as not to know they were not obliged to receive trade-dollars, or so intimidated that they dare not refuse them, reside in the State of Connecticut.  I commit them to the care of my friend and colleague from that district, [Mr. Landers,] who is himself a manufacturer, but too honorable to countenance such a gross proceeding.  I am not surprised that a public meeting was held over the outrage, and that a clergyman presided.

The recoinage of the standard dollar is not so much designed for general circulation as for a redemption basis for Government and bank issues.  Neither that nor gold is very convenient as a common currency, but they are both valuable as reserves to support paper circulation, and silver as well as gold is necessary to prepare the Treasury and the banks for the redemption of their notes.

Mr. Speaker, from whom comes the cry that the workingman will be defrauded by the reissue of this dollar ?  Not from himself, but from those who have no authority to speak in his name.  It comes from the men of all others whom he repudiates and distrusts, whose interests are in conflict with his, and who are demanding in his name what they are attempting to exact for themselves, and they greatly underestimate his intelligence when they assume he does not know it.  Silver has always been the popular currency of the workingman, an essential part of the hard money of which we have heard so much, and he who does not believe that the masses of the people desire the recoinage of the standard dollar deceives himself.  If the question could to-day be submitted to the people of this country, the opponents of this bill would be buried under an avalanche of indignant popular sentiment to which they now appear singularly indifferent.

It is not a question which affects a section only, but the whole country, and it is astonishing that a number of contiguous States, located in a particular section of the Union, should with their superior wealth and capital solidly combine against this bill.  Do they not see that it demonstrates the selfish and unreasonable demands of capital, and that upon this and all other measures affecting the finances of the country, they are provoking by their combination a feeling of decided antagonism to all their interests, and that it is from a party much stronger than themselves ?  It will be wisdom to remember that in a contest of strength the weaker goes to the wall.  Is it not sufficiently apparent that the demand for the reduction of internal taxation on the production of whisky and tobacco, the leading manufacturing interests of the West and South, and supplying the deficiency by a tax on the incomes of the capitalists of New England, New York, and New Jersey, and the demand for free trade and the withdrawal from eastern manufactures of the little benefit they now receive from tariff duties on foreign articles, are but measures of retaliation for the exactions of eastern capital, and that unless a greater willingness is shown to moderate those exactions still greater retaliation will be practiced ?

The next point of assault will be the national banks, whose taxation may be increased, their rates of discount reduced, and they may perhaps experience when too late the danger of losing the privilege of issuing their own circulating notes, and possibly the repeal of the law under which they exist.  If by concentration of sectional interest they continue to persist in exerting sectional power they will sow dragon's teeth which will certainly produce a harvest of destruction to themselves.

It is as true now as in the days of early prophecy, that he who sows the wind will reap the storm.  The stern lesson of the South in her demand for the extension of slavery and her loss of that, and of everything else, in her attempt to maintain and extend it, recent and pertinent as it is, should be a powerful admonition to the people of the Northeastern States to be wise in time, and it should be so heeded as to make its example useful to them.

In the course of the discussion upon this and kindred subjects, much, which has neither my concurrence nor sympathy, has been said about the "bloated bondholder."  Sir, the holders of the securities of the Government, as a class, are as respectable as any other.  The only complaint I make of them, and that has reference only to the wealthy and powerful corporations and capitalists among them, is that they selfishly, avariciously, and unjustly demanded too much in their own interest when they procured legislation changing the payment of existing bonds from paper to coin, and from coin to gold alone, and they are now repeating it in attempting to prevent a partial correction of the violation of those contracts by their opposition to this bill.  They can afford at least to be just, in view of the profits they have realized.  How does their account stand ?

The whole amount of bonds sold by the Government from 1862 to 1868, inclusive, is ....... $2,049,975,700
The amount received for them was only ........... 1,371,424,238

That there is a tendency to general silver demonetization by the governments of Europe except for subsidiary coinage is true.  Germany, with the exception of a limited amount in thalers, has accomplished it already.  Nearly all the other governments have either wholly or partially suspended silver coinage.  If an exclusively gold standard should be adopted throughout Europe, the United States might find it difficult to pursue a different and independent course.  If general demonetization of silver takes place, its consummation must be a work of considerable time, and meanwhile our bonds may mature or be refunded under an arrangement as to the mode of payment that will do no injustice to either the holders of them or the people by whom they are to be paid.

To demonetize silver as a currency throughout the commercial world will be to strike from existence an amount of circulating medium estimated to be equal to the entire coin production of the world for two hundred years.  This would diminish the debt-paying power and depreciate the value of all property but gold nearly one-half, and appreciate gold to the same extent.  The result would be a monetary crisis such as has never been experienced.  The duty of this country to attempt to prevent it by adhering to silver, and in that way to endeavor to check the current of its demonetization elsewhere, is too obvious to require elaboration.

It has been said silver was practically demonetized forty years ago.  How demonetized ?  Certainly not by legislation, for we have had none such.  Silver as a standard coin has been constantly recognized and provided for in our coinage laws till 1873.  The difficulty has arisen from the fact that the standard dollar has always been too valuable.  It has been worth more than gold and therefore could not circulate, because the paper dollar which was only at par with gold took its place.  For the reason that it was worth a premium and was drawn away from us by exchange for less valuable foreign coin, Mr. Jefferson, when President, advised the suspension of its coinage, and that suspension continued for many years.  After its coinage was resumed it immediately returned to its former place and premium, and for that reason few were coined and very few, unless in remote and thinly settled sections of the country, circulated as currency.  It was prevented by money less intrinsically valuable, because by an immutable law of finance the cheaper always takes the place of the dearer currency.

There would be equal propriety in saying gold was practically demonetized.  Very little of it has ever been in actual common circulation, and during the last seventeen years none at all.  It is seen and heard of only in payment of customs duties and interest on the public debt, and even then very little of the coin itself is actually handled.

The present depreciation in silver bullion, of which we have heard so much, is mainly attributable to demonetization in Germany and the United States, a diminished silver coinage in Europe generally, and a lessened demand for exportation to India and elsewhere.  Several other causes have in some small degree contributed, but those I have enumerated are the chief.

The coin thrown upon the market by German demonetization five years ago has nearly disappeared by exportation, consumption in manufacture, and general diffusion.  No other country in Europe has a surplus beyond its wants, and that which goes to the vast silver nations of the East passes into a receptacle from which it never returns.  The claim that if we remonetize silver we shall be flooded with it from Europe and from our own mines is unfounded and senseless, and equally so the fear that the recoinage of the dollar will drive away gold and return our bonds from abroad for conversion.  A silver dollar can only expel an equal amount in gold.  If the silver dollar is overvalued, it will have that tendency;  but the full legal-tender, standard dollar will be worth at least a gold dollar, and therefore not be overvalued.  Why do I assume it will be worth a dollar in gold ?  Because French and German full-tender five-franc pieces and thalers, with only 400 grains of silver, and Spanish and Mexican dollars, with less than 411 grains, with no legal-tender quality, are worth par in gold.  Place beside them our own standard dollar fully restored, and there can be no reasonable doubt but it will be at least their equal.

The capacity of our Mint is some seventy millions annually of both gold and silver.  If that is divided equally between the two metals, we get thirty-five millions of silver annually added to our stock ---a very small relative amount, and yet very important as an addition to the wealth and productive resources of the country and as furnishing an additional reserve for the redemption of our paper currency.

Silver bullion is now at about fifty-five pence per ounce.  To be at par with gold it should be at fifty-nine.  That this depreciation is temporary is very probable.  For this opinion there is very high authority and among the learned scientists who express it is David Wells, of my own State, a gentleman of the highest order of intelligence and of great learning on this subject.  He repels the idea that we shall be flooded with foreign silver, and believes the standard dollar, when restored, will immediately go to par, or very near it.  He stands in the front rank of those who are contending for the single gold standard, yet his candor compels him to these admissions.  The London Times and the London Economist have recently expressed the same opinion with regard to the effect of the remonetization of silver in this country.  The deliberate admissions of intelligent adversaries go very far to establish a fact in controversy, and with such evidence in connection with facts, which are themselves demonstrable and to which I have referred with reference to coin, I leave this branch of the subject.

The fear that the funding of our bonds may be interrupted by the passage of this bill, may be realized until there is an abatement of the present unnecessary agitation in the money centers of the country.  But as soon as it is ascertained that a silver dollar is worth a gold one, and that we are adding to our means of payment thirty-five millions a year by the accumulation of silver, funding will receive a renewed impetus and make the bonds to our own people, who alone should be the holders of them, more valuable than ever.  That some of those held abroad may for a little time be returned by disgusted German capitalists, who made their hundreds of millions by silver demonetization in their own country and here, is quite probable;  yet they will soon discover that at even 4 per cent., payable in gold and silver, they are a safer and more profitable investment than is afforded by the national securities of any European government.

The balance of trade in our favor will naturally return some of them for conversion, and it is desirable to have it so.  It is one of our chief causes of embarrassment that nearly a thousand millions of our Government bonds, to say nothing of the great amount of our other indebtedness, are held abroad, which takes from us, with some sixty millions we have to pay for our carrying trade, more than two hundred millions of gold annually, enough to exhaust our trade balance and the gold resources of our mines.  If our own people owned our bonds, as the English, French, and Germans do the bonds of their governments, and if we had an American commerce as we ought to have, our road to specie resumption under the natural operations of the laws of trade, with national and individual economy and wise legislation, would be free from serious difficulty.  The nation that owes a large debt abroad, however prolific in resources, is the slave of a foreign master, and the sooner it emancipates itself the better for its prosperity.

To the reiterated charges against the supporters of this bill of "coin debasing," "fraud," and "robbery," and kindred epithets which have been liberally indulged in by a subsidized press, and I regret to be obliged to say, also, by some of its opponents in Congress, I have no answer to make.  I scorn to make any;  and if the vile contagion had not reached the pulpit, and the slander been repeated and given currency by those who should not only observe, but teach, the law of Christian charity, I should not notice it.  But to the purchased clamor of the press and the bold asseveration of the congressional orator, gentlemen illustrious as doctors in divinity, who desire to be revered and profess to be the consecrated ministers of God, have added their anathema.  The names of Beecher and Bacon and Frothingham and Cuyler and Cook are identified with the accusation.  In all that constitutes an enviable reputation in theology, I doubt not they may be the peers of any in their sacred calling.  I would that I could say as much for them as exemplars in finance and political economy.  With a more profound knowledge of the subject, I am sure they would have exhibited less presumption, and with less zeal and more discretion have been less likely to have forgotten the declaration of Him in whose name they teach that they cannot serve both God and mammon.  If there is any species of mammon less deserving than another of respect it is that which by class legislation in its interest obtains unjust advantage and uses it to "oppress the hireling in his wages."  During the last twelve years that kind of legislation in this country has not only oppressed the hireling, but depreciated the property and blasted the prosperity and destroyed the business of the country, until employment is gone and the hireling has been compelled to become a wanderer, a beggar, and, in many instances, a criminal.

Third.  Into the question of the practicability of returning to the double standard I shall not go at length.  To discuss it fully would involve the exploration of a labyrinth of almost unfathomable research.  A few plain suggestions of a practical character will be all that I shall attempt to make, and in my judgment are all that are necessary.  Finance experts of the profoundest learning and experience maintain different and conflicting theories, and much is finally left even by themselves to abstract speculation.

That the double standard is impossible is contradicted by the uniform history of the world from the days of Abraham, which is as far in the dim and dusky ages of antiquity as it is profitable to go.  That it is practicable has been demonstrated by every commercial nation of the world, though some of them have from reasons of convenience or policy, or through the influence of a certain kind of capital, abandoned it.  It has existed in our own Government during the entire period of our history until 1873.  It was established by the fathers of the Republic, who though not as rich and perhaps not as confident, were certainly no less wise and patriotic than the financiers of the present day.  The silver dollar was the only dollar coined in this country until 1849, and until that time was the only American coin of that denomination.

I admit there may and probably will sometimes be temporary difficulties in maintaining a precise ratio of value between the two, and the standard may occasionally ---though I think but very seldom need to be adjusted to the changing circumstances of demand and supply.  From 1792 to 1873 the greatest variation in this country was a little more than 3 per cent., and with the exceptions of the years 1809, 1810, and 1815 the preponderance was always in favor of silver.  These fluctuations occasioned no serious embarrassment and no reason is apparent why after the present derangement is removed they should be greater in the future than the past.  The total amount of gold in existence is about double that of silver, and their production is about in that proportion.

I have said thus much by way of replying to the objections which have been plausibly and very ably urged against the bill.  I desire now to add a few affirmative considerations in support of my opinion that the act of demonetization was wrong, and that the discarded dollar should now be restored.

The Constitution of the United States prohibits the States from making anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in the payment of debts.  Although this is negative language, its proper construction gives to the States the right to do that which is excepted from the prohibition.  This being so, they have the constitutional right to make silver coin a legal tender to an unlimited or any less amount in their discretion.  The extent to which they will go is to be determined wholly in their own discretion, independently of the exercise of any control by Congress or by the General Government.  The right being conferred by the Constitution, is as permanent as the provision by which it is conferred, and nothing less than its abolishment by a change in the fundamental law can take away the right.  That right has been palpably invaded and the constitutional provision disregarded by the acts of Congress dropping from the coinage and demonetizing the standard dollar, and by limiting to $5 the legal tender of subsidiary coins.  By that legislation the rights of the citizens of the States have been unreasonably and unlawfully abridged, and in my judgment no power exists in the Congress of the United States to demonetize a coin which the Constitution allows to the States the privilege of making a legal tender.  This answers the claim that contracts made since the act of demonetization can be discharged only in gold.  If demonetization was unconstitutional, the rights of parties were unaffected by it.

The Constitution also declares in the same clause that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of a contract.  We have 783,000,000 of government bonds, issued under the act of July 14, 1870, which are payable in the standard silver dollar, and made so payable by the express provisions of that law.  Congress violated that law and impaired the obligation of the contract embraced in every bond issued under it when they demonetized that dollar.  They thereby made the bonds payable, not according to the contract, but in a coin made scarcer and dearer by the demonetization of the standard dollar, and compelled the tax-payers of the country to discharge that extra burden.  This prohibition to the States proceeds upon the reason that such laws would be unjust to those who should be prejudiced by them.  The violation or impairment of the obligation of a contract is no more just or tolerable when done by Congress than by a State, and a wrong thus perpetrated should be corrected.

Various propositions have been made, but all rejected, to make this coin of greater weight than 412.5 grains.  There is a conclusive answer to all such, and it has its foundation in the inviolability of contracts.  The number of grains is prescribed in the law under which the bonds of the Government have been issued.  That number can neither be increased nor diminished, whatever may be the fluctuations of the metal.  It is "nominated in the bond," and shielded by all the legal safeguards which are thrown around the sanctity of contracts.  The number cannot be reduced, because the creditor would be injured;  it cannot be increased, because the people who pay the bonds would be unjustly wronged.

The kind or quality or weight of money in which a debt shall be discharged, when expressly stipulated, is a vital part of the contract.  As between individuals, the courts would not permit it to be violated.  Should the Government be less just and honorable and faithful to its obligations ?

The real question involved in this whole controversy is in a nutshell.  It has been attempted to be concealed by irrelevant and extraneous issues, and has been much of the time buried in the ingenious sophistry and the gilded rhetoric which have surrounded it.  When plainly stated, the school-boy with average intelligence and an ordinary sense of justice can readily comprehend and solve it.

It is not whether we have a sufficient volume of currency to transact the business of the country, or whether we have more or less than before the war, or than England or any other country has, or whether a double standard can be established that shall be so precise in its operation as to always keep in exact equipoise the value of the two metals, or whether the number of standard dollars heretofore coined is more or less, or whether silver bullion is depreciated in comparison with gold, or whether other governments have demonetized silver or stopped its coinage.  These, and many others of kindred nature, have been very ably and elaborately discussed, but they are merely incidental.  The great and vital and yet very simple question underlies them all.  It is whether a coin demonetized by an act of Congress which violated the Constitution and the express stipulations of the most solemn contracts shall be restored.  It is nothing other or different from that.  And when the principles of either law or equity, of sound legislation or morality, are applied to it all difficulty with regard to its proper solution disappears.

The bill as it passed this House on the 5th of November last contained what is known as the free-coinage provision, by which owners of silver bullion or foreign silver coins might present them at the Mint and have them coined at Government expense.  This provision was inserted to place the owners of silver coin and bullion on an equal plane with those of gold, who have that privilege.  In my judgment neither should have it.  The Government should purchase its bullion and coin it.  The Senate have amended the bill by erasing the free-coinage clause and limiting the coinage to not less than two nor more than four millions a month.  While I would have preferred a larger minimum I will vote for this amendment.  It is better to take the bill with that limitation and the principle of remonetization secured, than return it to the Senate with the uncertainty and delay that would attend that course.

I am also in favor of the Senate amendment providing for the deposit of silver coin in the Treasury and receiving therefor certificates of corresponding value, which may be used in payment of customs, taxes, and all public dues.

To the amendment providing for an international convention to settle the relative value of gold and silver coin I am opposed.  No other government should have a voice or influence in determining for us a question which we are competent to settle for ourselves.  Besides, the amendment is so phrased as not in terms to require congressional approval of the acts of the convention.  It might assume to change the weight or quality of the silver coin, and thereby affect all existing contracts which may be discharged in it.  If my vote is necessary to save the amendment, and thereby prevent the return of the bill to the Senate, I may be induced to give it, but not otherwise.

There are doubtless those who expect too much from the adoption of this measure and will be disappointed at the result.  It will afford neither great nor immediate relief.  The trouble lies too deep to be either remedied or much relieved by this alone.  But it is an important step in the right direction and one necessary with others to produce ultimate complete relief.  It can aid to the amount of at least thirty or thirty-five millions a year, which is about the limit of its capacity, because it is near the maximum of the silver production of the country.

I have now finished all I propose to say upon the merits of the silver bill, and in connection with it disposed of the question of repudiation, except on that point to add by way of commentary the opinions of Mr. Sherman and Mr. Morton, both leading Senators at the time the act of March 18, 1869, to strengthen the public credit by making all the bonds of the Government payable in coin, was under consideration.  It is pertinent not only as showing who in their judgment were the real repudiators, but in confirmation of the correctness of my own judgment with regard to the obligation of the parties to contracts to discharge them according to their literal terms.  It will be remembered that many of the bonds were payable in paper currency, which was then at a discount of more than 30 per cent.

Senator Morton said:

And now I propound the question.  It is either intended by this bill to make a new contract or it is not.  If it is intended to make a new contract, I protest against it.  We should do foul injustice to the Government and the people of the United States after we have sold these bonds on an average for not more than sixty cents on the dollar now to make a new contract for the benefit of the holders.

Again he said:

It gives to those laws a construction that I do not believe in and that I have shown is contradicted by at least four acts of Congress.

And again:

Sir, it is understood, I believe, that the passage of a bill of this kind would have the effect in Europe, where our financial questions are not well understood, to increase the demand, and that will enable the great operators to sell the bonds they have on hand at a profit.  It is in the nature of a broker's operation.  It is a bull movement intended to put up the price of bonds for the interest of parties dealing in them.  This great interest is thundering at the doors of Congress, and has for many months and by every means been attempting to drive us into legislation for the purpose of making money for the great operators.  That is what it means and nothing else.

And Senator Sherman, in reply to a correspondent, wrote the following letter:

Dear Sir:  I was pleased to receive your letter.  My personal interests are the same as yours, but, like you, I do not intend to be influenced by them.  My construction of the law is the result of careful examination, and I feel quite sure an impartial court would confirm it, if the case could be tried before a court.  I send you my views as fully stated in a speech.  Your idea is that we propose to repudiate or violate a promise when we offer to redeem the "principal" in legal-tenders.  I think the bondholder violates his promise when he refuses to take the same kind of money he paid for the bonds.  If the case is to be tested by the law, I am right;  if it is to be tested by Jay Cooke's advertisements, I am wrong.  I hate repudiation or anything like it, but we ought not to be deterred from doing what is right by fear of undeserved epithets.  If under the law as it stands the holders of the five-twenties can only be paid in gold, then we are repudiators if we propose to pay otherwise.  If the bondholder can legally demand only the kind of money he paid, then he is a repudiator and extortioner to demand money more valuable than he gave.

Truly yours, John Sherman.

The resolutions of the Connecticut Legislature contain a very emphatic and unconditional expression against any postponement of the time named in the existing law for the resumption of specie payment.  They condemn delay without regard to the question whether resumption at the time named is practicable or even possible.  This may be questionable statesmanship.  If the country shall then be in proper condition for resumption, I agree that we should resume.  If it is not prepared, we should not build upon the land, but act the part of wisdom and wait until it is, meanwhile making all reasonable efforts to reach the point of proper preparation.  Forced resumption without that preparation will only, by a premature attempt and necessary failure, aggravate the existing trouble.  It can only be safely attempted after such careful preparation as will make it sure and permanent.  This has always been my position on the subject, and it would seem that any other lacked the most essential elements of proper legislation.  The people of the whole country are deeply interested in it and have already suffered far too much to be longer made the victims of uncalculating and reckless financial experiments.  The Government might have been prepared but is not.  When it had gold it ostentatiously sold it in the market instead of saving it for resumption, and thereby delayed preparation and hindered the execution of the law.

In certain sections the cry for immediate resumption is popular, and hence changes have been and are being incessantly rung upon it.  Its popularity in those sections arises from the fact that they are the great centers of capital.  There gold is king, as cotton was once said to be in another section.  The gold monopolists demand it because it is for their special interest to have it.  Owning the gold, or being able to control it, its enhanced demand for the purpose of resumption would necessarily increase its value and their coffers would be the receptacles of the profit.  They insist upon it notwithstanding they are not ignorant of the difficulties of its accomplishment nor of the road through business paralysis, shrinkage in values in everything but gold, bankruptcies, loss of employment, and general distress by which alone it can be reached.  They seem either oblivious to or regardless of the woe pronounced against those who build their houses by unrighteous gain and allow the better instincts of their nature to be stifled by the greed of avarice.

If substantial and practical resumption is intended under the existing law according to its original purpose, I still think it is entirely improbable of accomplishment.  It will call for the retirement by purchase in gold with the avails of Government bonds sold for that purpose, of forty-nine millions of greenbacks between this time and the 1st of January, and the redemption and final retirement on and after that time on demand of the remaining three hundred millions.  To accomplish this the interest-bearing debt of the Government must be increased forty-nine millions and the currency contracted in that amount.

The next requisite will be the accumulation of three hundred millions in gold, or nearly that, to redeem the remaining legal-tenders.  As the day for resumption approaches, the national banks, for their own protection, will obtain in exchange for their own notes, and hoard the greater part of them and have them ready to present at the national Treasury and take the gold.  The legal tenders now compose their reserves and basis of redemption, but when these are withdrawn they can redeem only in gold, and this is their convenient and only way to acquire it in any considerable amount;  and they will not be slow to avail themselves of the opportunity to do it without paying a premium for the gold.  In fact they must do it or be left in a condition of utter inability to redeem their notes.  The remaining legal tenders not so absorbed will be constantly being presented, and by the terms of the law the gold must be ready in the Treasury to redeem them.

We are now only ten months from the time indicated for resumption.  What preparation has been made, and in what condition is the Treasury ?  We had at the commencement of this month, according to the statement of the Secretary, only sixty-six millions of gold available for the purpose.  The forty-nine millions of bonds to be sold will increase the amount to one hundred and fifteen millions, less than half the amount that must be obtained.  Where the balance is to come from no one except by the merest speculation is wise enough to inform us, and nearly one-half of the above is only to be gotten by an absolute and destructive reduction of the currency that will tell with fearful power upon the property and the business interests of the people.

It may be said that it is estimated there are something over one hundred millions of gold in the country besides what is in the Treasury.  Of that the national banks have twenty-two millions.  The balance is an entirely unknown quantity and its location as uncertain as the amount.  The banks will be obliged to keep what little they have, and forty-nine millions must somewhere be found to pay for that amount of bonds which must be sold.  If that does not exhaust what there is in the country, the balance does not belong to the Government, and is not available for resumption.  From whence can gold be acquired ?  Certainly not from Europe, for the governments there are suspending silver coinage and accumulating all the gold they can.  The balance of trade is now fortunately in favor of this country so far as merchandise is concerned, but the gold interest we have to pay abroad, the cost of our carrying trade, and the expenses and other disbursements of our people traveling abroad, fully cover both that and the gold product of our mines.  There is, then, even under the present favorable state of our foreign trade, no accumulation and no reasonable prospect of any;  and therefore the positive assertion that the Governments will resume according to the terms of the law as intended and interpreted is rash and violent when the interests which are imperiled by it are considered.

Besides, our foreign merchandise balance is capricious and liable to change.  The last two years have been very favorable, aggregating two hundred and thirty millions;  but meantime nearly two hundred millions have been required for gold interest and one hundred and twenty-five millions for the carrying of our merchandise in foreign bottoms, while our gold product has been less than one hundred millions.  We have had abundant crops of grain and other products, for which there has been a fair demand in Europe, which has been greatly stimulated by the war which has now apparently closed.

Another year and even a succession of them may result in short crops here and abundant crops abroad, which would entirely change the balance of trade and turn it largely against us and cause a heavy flow of gold to our European creditors.  Our bonds held there may be returned in considerable sums for conversion, and it is said several millions are now on the way or have recently arrived.  There is a benefit in this by placing our bonds at home where they should be held;  yet their conversion calls for an equivalent amount in coin, and if they are bought with gold so much as is required to pay for them passes from us to our foreign creditors.  These facts and contingencies show if not the impossibility, at least, the great uncertainty of the ability of the Government to discharge the promise contained in that law according to its terms and the intention of its authors, and presents a grave question which a prudent conservatism will regard, whether a measure of such vital importance shall, in the critical monetary condition of the country, be forcibly consummated regardless of the risk.  Will not a little delay, until we can have an opportunity to judge precisely of our ability and to see our way clearly to the result, be much safer and more satisfactory ?  Is specie resumption on any particular day of sufficient consequence to justify a step which may occasion so much unnecessary peril;  or are party policy and pride to be maintained regardless of any sacrifices they may cost the people ?

Mr. Speaker, I most earnestly protest against the further contraction of the currency by which only resumption can be accomplished in the literal execution of that law.  It is that form of execution which its friends designed, and which is demanded by the Legislature of my State;  and any attempt to execute the law without an amount of gold equivalent to the volume of legal-tenders or near it, will be an evasion of its object and a failure.  Three hundred and forty-nine millions of paper money, the safest and best we ever had, or can have, bearing no interest, is to be withdrawn and destroyed, and gold is to be substituted.  No large part of that will enter into active circulation.  The banks will necessarily retain much of it as a reserve.  The people will see very little, and their actual and practical circulating medium will be largely restricted.  Forty-nine millions will be absolutely contracted before the day of redemption is reached.

I do not propose to exhibit a tabulated statement, though I have it at hand, to show the course and extent of contraction since 1865.  It is sufficient to say that in three years alone it reached the enormous sum of nearly one thousand millions, and at the inauguration of the panic of 1873 our circulating medium in all its forms was 75 per cent. less than at the close of the war.  While the war continued, the volume was not too large.  It was needed for its prosecution and the immensely increased and stimulated business of the country while the war continued.  After that it was undoubtedly too large, and should have been greatly but so gradually reduced as to produce no disastrous shock to the business of the country.

If we had been guided by the financial wisdom which has characterized the government of France, we could not only have protected our manufactures and other industries, but kept our laboring people employed, resumed specie payment, paid half our national debt, and been to-day the most prosperous nation on the globe.  But we have in all respects pursued a policy precisely the reverse, and the result has necessarily been exactly the opposite.  Instead of owing her debt, which is much larger than ours, abroad, she owes it to her own people and the interest is paid to them.  Instead of ruinously contracting her currency after the close of her gigantic war, she wisely maintained it at a sufficient point to keep her industries in active and successful operation and prevent an unreasonable depreciation in the values of property.  Instead of destroying her manufactures by free trade, she protected them by a liberal tariff;  and instead of a beggarly two hundred millions of coin in her national treasury and among her people, she has, without any mining product whatever, twelve hundred and fifty millions, after paying the greatest war indemnity ever exacted from any government.  In all the material elements of prosperity she is among the nations of the earth as Saul among his people.

Though disastrously defeated in war, she has since achieved a moral victory in financial administration more glorious than any martial success, which makes her more than conqueror over all her rivals.  With comparatively small territory, and a population of thirty-three millions, she has a circulating medium of eighteen hundred millions;  while we, with an immense area and diversified interests, and inexhaustible mineral resources, with a population of forty-three millions have much less than half her circulating medium, and our per capita is much below that of both Great Britain and the German Empire.  They are now like ourselves, both under the single gold standard, and like us are suffering from depressed industries and hard times, while France is sagaciously preserving the double standard and in all other respects managing her finances with a consummate skill adapted to her situation.

It is true we have more money in the country than we had twenty years ago, and more than is actually demanded for the contracted business that is being done.  It is also true that it is lying idle and may be borrowed on call at a low rate of interest by those whose credit is gilt-edged.  This is because so little business is being done and the demand for money is so small.  Prudent men dare not engage in new enterprises while the dangerous weapon of forced resumption is impending over them, and shrewd capitalists refuse to loan their funds to those whose necessities or courage would induce them to risk the hazard.  The growth of the country in development and resources since before the war has been very great, and a sufficient amount of money to have conveniently transacted its business then would be very insufficient now, if the existing paralysis was removed and confidence restored.

The circulating medium of Great Britain and Germany is also comparatively small, and as I have already said they are both suffering great depression and their operatives are idle almost by the million and experiencing the severest destitution.  This, in short, is the answer to those who support their contraction theory by the argument that there is now more money in the country than is needed for its business, and that England and Germany are successfully prosecuting their industries on a less relative circulation than is demanded here by those who are opposed to the financial policy of the Government.

What has been the effect of this policy of contraction which is steadily proceeding under the resumption act, and which by its provisions must be increased forty-nine millions in the next ten months ?  Bankruptcy, idleness, distress, ruin.  Business, with the impetus it had received from abundant money, struggled against it with all the means it could command until the panic of 1873 suddenly broke upon the country.  The burden had already become almost too great to be borne, and the bursting of the panic at once destroyed all remaining confidence and precipitated the pent-up flood of business destruction full upon the country.

Sir, the most annoying chapter in the sad history is that which contains the recital of the fact that no necessity existed for such severe contraction.  It is no answer to say that the amount of currency in the country was only five hundred millions before the war.  The war produced a new era.  It changed the financial condition and necessities of the country.  It immensely increased the circulation, and extended the business of the people.  When this condition had been produced the necessary backward change to have been conservative and safe should have been so gradual as not to destroy the interests which had grown up under and been fostered by it.

The measures which produced the contraction were not adopted in the interest of necessity or relief, but of avarice and greed and oppression and cruel wrong toward those who were helpless to resist.  They were not to lighten the burden of distress which prevailed all over the land and which was rapidly consuming the remaining substance of the laborer and the trader, but to weigh them down with still heavier and more oppressive burdens by curtailing their resources, and in connection with the resumption act, then in contemplation, making all their obligations payable in gold;  and by intensifying the embarrassments of those on whom the laborer depended for employment, and at the same time enriching those who were the holders of the bonds of the Government by appreciating their value in the market.  They together comprised the successive steps by which capital with stealthy tread was marching to its aggrandizement over the bankruptcy of fifty-five thousand recorded business firms who have already passed through the fires of financial martyrdom, and of whom it may be said:

"Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now."

The unrecorded number never will be accurately known;  and this ghostly army is being constantly recruited and kept full by the eight or ten thousand yearly victims crowded into its ranks with no present hope of reduction except in proportion to the decrease of the whole number from which future additions may be drawn.  These, and those who are hereafter to be made to tread the same path of ruin unless relief is interposed, were a few years since among the prosperous manufacturers and traders of the country, and but for the blighting financial policy inaugurated by McCulloch in 1865, which has been since persistently followed by his successors in the administration of the Treasury Department, would most of them be now in a condition the reverse of what we see them.

But the number of bankrupt merchants and other business men, startling as it is, is almost insignificant beside that host of laboring men and women, more than three millions strong, living in enforced idleness, of whom one-third are estimated to be tramps asking not only for labor but for the bread needed to keep them from starvation.  What suffering these persons experience for themselves and families, and by what temptations to the commission of crime they are beset, the omniscient God only knows;  and in the language of the eloquent Senator from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] in speaking on this subject:

When the strong hand of the Government is interposing between the laboring man and the laboring woman and their last chance for bread by honest work, their sins for self-preservation are less odious to their merciful Father than the prayers of the usurers who have driven them to ruin.

We have had many periods of financial distress in our short history as a nation, but never one that approximated this in the terrible magnitude of its consequences;  none like this that has already reduced to straitened circumstances a much greater number than that which volunteered to save the Union in its peril, and many of them, alas, far too many for the honor of the country, the very men who risked their lives in its defense;  and we are yet apparently as far as ever from permanent relief.  The occasional gleams of light which have been confidently heralded as the promises of returning day have one by one faded back into night, and we seem drifting on a shoreless sea of business desolation with incompetent or reckless financial pilots, who refuse to direct the ship of state by any course but that which has been a constant scene of shipwreck for the last five years.  Groups of idlers in the public places of the cities;  the flag and hammer of the auctioneer;  the multiplied notices of "for sale" and "to rent;"  the foreclosure of mortgages;  the closing of stores and workshops;  the numbers imploring assistance, tell the sad story of the loss of both property and employment, and of destitution and distress and crime.

But a few months since not only the militia of the States but the regular Army were required to quell the violent disturbances of a wronged and idle people; idle, perhaps, partly from their own exorbitant demands, and whose outrages I do not attempt to justify.  It is to be hoped there will be no like future occasion for their services.  There need be none if the strangling clutch of currency contraction is removed and the business interests of the country properly encouraged.

If this was all the result of merely mistaken policy, arising from the want of past example and experience, it might be palliated, if not excused;  but history blazes with beacons which would have warned those who had charge of the subject, but they would not heed.  They "knew their duty," but they "did it not."  Great Britain passed through a similar trial at the close of her long and exhausting war against Napoleon, with what result the pen of her chroniclers has described in words that ought to burn into the hearts of those in this country who have stubbornly insisted on pursuing the same disastrous policy.  Thus far our record on that subject is a counterpart of hers.

The Bank of England, which was practically the national treasury, suspended specie payment from 1797 to 1823.  Its paper issues were necessarily largely increased to meet the vast expenses of a giant war, and its specie was sent to the continent to be expended in its prosecution.  During that period her home industries and foreign commerce, stimulated by her greatly enlarged circulation, were marked by wonderful development and prosperity.

The war closed in 1816, and a demand by British gold-mongers was immediately made for a return to specie payment;  and so potent was their influence that in 1819 an act was passed to take effect in 1823.  The method was by such contraction as to reduce the paper circulation to the amount of gold.  Such heroic treatment could not fail to accomplish it.  The result is stated by Alison and Doubleday in the following language:

The effects of this extraordinary piece of legislation were soon apparent.  The industry of the nation was speedily congealed, as a flowing stream is by the severity of an Arctic winter.  The alarm became as universal and widespread as confidence and activity had recently been.  The country bankers, who had advanced largely on the stocks of goods imported, refused to continue their support to their customers, and they were forced to bring their stocks into the market.  Prices in consequence fell rapidly;  that of cotton, in particular, sank in three months to half its former level.  The country bankers' association was contracted by no less than five millions sterling ($24,000,000);  and the entire circulation of England fell from $235,545,000 in 1818 to $174,385,000 in 1820, and in the succeeding year it sank as low as $142,757,000.

The effects of this sudden and prodigious contraction of the currency were soon apparent, and they rendered the next three years a period of ceaseless distress and suffering in the British Islands.  The accommodation granted by bankers diminished so much in consequence of the obligation laid upon them to pay in specie, which was not to be got, that the paper under discount at the Bank of England, which in 1810 had been $115,000,000, and in 1815 not less than $103,000,000, sank in 1820 to $23,360,000, and in 1821 to $13,610,000.  The effect upon prices was not less immediate or appalling.  They declined in general, within six months, to half their former amount, and remained at that low level for the next three years.  Distress was universal in the latter months of 1819, and that distrust and discouragement were felt in all branches of industry which are at once the forerunner and cause of disaster.

Doubleday, in his Financial, Monetary, and Statistical History of England, says:

We have already seen the fall in prices produced by the immense narrowing of the paper circulation.  The distress, ruin and bankruptcy which now took place were universal, affecting the great interests both of land and trade;  but especially among land owners, whose estates were burthened by mortgages, settlements, legacies, etc., the effects were most marked and out of the ordinary course.  In hundreds of cases, from the tremendous reduction which now took place, the estates barely sold for as much as would pay off the mortgages;  and hence the owners were stripped of all and made beggars.

It is both interesting and instructive to know that the master spirit in this policy lived to learn and acknowledge and regret the great mistake.  Our resumption act is a servile imitation of its British prototype even to the length of time given to pass through the preparatory process of contraction, and our way is strewn with the same universal wreck of business and of fortune.

As an example of the destitution that prevails, and the eager efforts of our laboring population to obtain employment, I quote from the late powerful speech of Senator Jones, of Nevada, in favor of the silver bill, an article copied from the New York Tribune of a recent date, speaking of the wreck of the steamer Metropolis, and the loss of those who had embarked on her to seek employment abroad, and also the eloquent comments of the Senator upon the article:

"One of the most terribly significant incidents connected with the loss of the Metropolis last week was the fact that one hour after the news that the ship had gone down arrived in Philadelphia with all the exaggerated horrors of a first dispatch, the office of the Messrs. Collins was besieged with hundreds of hunger-bitten, decent men, begging for the places of the drowned laborers.  In this city there have been over a thousand applicants at the agency for New South Wales, to be sent out as laborers and mechanics on the clipper ship starting this month for Sydney.

"These people represent but a fraction of the great mass of unemployed poor in the cities, men who are not paupers from inclination any more than the most respectable reader of the Tribune;  honest, industrious, frugal, in the majority of cases heads of families, who are out of work, and are ready to go to the other side of the globe or to the forests of Brazil to get work to keep their wives and children from starving.  It is useless to ignore this miserable, gaunt fact which stares us in the face at every corner.  It is not to be dispelled any longer by soup-houses on the one hand, organized precautions against tramps on the other.  We have had enough discussion on the relative advantages of occasional and organized charity.  It is not charity that is wanted:  it is work;  and the only work which offers now as a relief to the suffering in the cities is farming.  How the unemployed mechanics and laborers have got through this winter, God only knows ---they have been greatly helped by the mild weather.  But in three weeks spring will open, and what is then to be done ?  The revival of business will be too slight to afford them any tangible help.  Are they all to sink down permanently into tramps and paupers ?  Or, in case of a revival of the labor troubles of last July, are we to keep them as a reserve corps, ready, as then, to join, with terrible effect, the side of disorder, riot, and rapine ?"

This simple description of the deplorable condition to which the laboring populations of New York and Philadelphia have been reduced has about it a touching pathos which speaks straight to the heart, and with a power all the greater that it is but too easily recognized as a description of miseries everywhere prevailing.  The woes and wretchedness of war have been often portrayed;  but have Senators considered that their sweep is far narrower than that of the calamities which follow contraction and an appreciation in the value of money ?  The fiery pathway of revolution can be trod with less suffering than the burning plowshares of falling prices, decaying industries, enforced idleness, and destitution of laborers ---conditions absolutely inseparable from contraction.

Coming, as this description does, from a leading organ and advocate of the contraction policy, the picture cannot be suspected of having been in the slightest degree overdrawn.  The same is unhappily true with respect to the condition of great numbers in all our large cities.

On whom does the responsibility rest ?  On Hugh McCulloch and his British contraction scheme.  On the authors of the act of March 18, 1869, styled "An act to strengthen the public credit," by which all the bonds of the Government were declared to be payable in coin, which largely increased the market value of the bonds and as largely added to the public burdens.  On the authors of the act of February 12, 1873, demonetizing silver and making the bonds payable in gold alone, and again adding largely to the people's taxes;  and on the projectors of the act of January 12, 1875, fixing the 1st day of January next as the time for resumption and proposing to accomplish it only by a ruinous process of contraction.

I am happy to say these several and connected acts of republican legislation received no democratic support, but were passed as partisan measures, against and in spite of democratic opposition;  and resumption, prematurely, as I believe, is now being attempted to be forced against the democratic protest of the House of Representatives and of the country by a republican Senate supported by all the influence of a republican administration.  If pushed to its accomplishment, the judgment that the country will pronounce against its authors will not be undeserved.

I have thus far discussed the question of resumption upon the theory that the act meant what has always heretofore been claimed for it by its friends and conceded by its opponents, namely, the redemption in gold of all the legal-tenders and their absolute retirement as currency.  This is undoubtedly its proper construction.  The theory and argument of the advocates of the measure have always been that the issue of irredeemable Government currency was only justifiable as a necessary war measure, and that the Government should make the earliest practicable provision to retire it and supply its place with gold.  To this I do not particularly object if it is made to embrace silver as well as gold, and not prematurely and unwisely forced.  But sufficient preparation for permanent resumption by the time named is in my opinion not to be reasonably expected.

The attempt to redeem three hundred millions with one-third or one-half that amount will not do.  The English rule and practice with regard to bank resumption is to require an amount in gold equal to one-third of the circulation and deposits of the bank.  That would require more than three hundred millions of our banks, which have over three hundred millions of circulation and over six hundred millions of deposits.  They have only twenty-two millions of gold, and therefore when the legal-tenders are retired under the process of resumption, they will need on this safe basis of the English financiers the entire amount of gold with which they are redeemed;  in other words, as I have already stated, they will need to hoard all or nearly all the greenbacks to properly prepare themselves for the new condition.

France has two dollars and a half in gold and legal-tender silver for one in paper, England nearly three in gold alone to one in paper;  while our Government has but one in gold to five in paper, and yet it proposes within ten months to put itself on a resumption basis with France and England.  Can it safely be said that it must be done ?  From January, 1875, to February, 1878, only an accumulation of sixty-six of the three hundred millions needed has been made, and a considerable part of that only by the sale of bonds and a corresponding addition to the public debt.

That resumption cannot be accomplished at the time and in the manner contemplated is now substantially admitted by the Secretary of the Treasury.  In his recent communication to Congress he expresses the opinion that under section 3579 of the Revised Statutes three hundred millions of legal tenders may be reissued after redemption, and that they need not be retired.  This directly contradicts all former claims and theories that the faith of the Government is pledged to the redemption and cancellation of this irredeemable paper which had its birth in the nation's necessity, which was to be redeemed as soon as the Government was in a condition to do it, and upon such redemption permanently retired.  The suggestion of the Secretary has very much the appearance of seizing upon a pretext for inability to resume, and if adopted practically dispenses with resumption.

This confession of the Secretary, doubtless made from compulsion of circumstances, fully corroborates the claim of those who have contended that complete gold resumption could not permanently take place at the time fixed by law, because the necessary preparation has not been and cannot now be made.  There need have been no difficulty about resumption at any time after our bonds reached par.  The greenbacks were originally convertible into bonds, and the withdrawal of the privilege of convertibility, which was intended to disparage the greenback, recoiled upon itself, and delayed if it has not defeated resumption.  The Secretary made another confession of financial blundering in a letter to Senator Christiancy under date of January 26, 1878, when be said:

In all my official connection with legislation as to legal-tender notes, I have but one act to regret and to apologize for, and that is my acquiescence in the act of March 3, 1863, which, under the pressure of war and to promote the sale of bonds, took away from the holders of these notes the right to convert them into interest-bearing securities.  The right might properly have been suspended during war, but its repeal was a fatal act, the source and cause of all the financial evils we have suffered, and from which we cannot recover until we restore that right or redeem, on demand, our notes in coin.

He also now proposes the unlimited issue of subsidiary silver of less value than the standard dollar, the limit of which is now fixed at not exceeding fifty millions.  Even he appears to consider "depreciated silver" good enough for the "dear people," while he insists that the bond-holders shall have gold, and seems now to entertain the opinion that the people must depend for their currency on such silver and on greenbacks instead of gold.

The platform of the last democratic national convention, in speaking of the republican party and its numerous delinquencies, asserts a want of preparation for resumption and consequent inability to resume under the present law in the following words:

We denounce the financial imbecility and immorality of that party, which, during eleven years of peace, has made no advance toward resumption, no preparation for resumption;  but, instead, has obstructed resumption by wasting our resources and exhausting all our surplus income, and, while annually professing to intend a speedy return to specie payments, has annually enacted fresh hinderances thereto.  As such a hinderance we denounce the resumption clause of the act of 1875 and we here demand its repeal.

That paragraph in the platform perhaps contains more truth than was intended;  but it very distinctly expresses my individual opinion, and I have stood squarely on and voted in accordance with it and with the most recent platform of the democratic party of Connecticut, which declared that both gold and silver were constitutional currency.  My opinion and principles have remained unchanged and will continue as they are until I am shown some satisfactory reason why they are erroneous.

Mr. Ewing. [Thomas Ewing (1829-1896), Lancaster Ohio, D.;  studied law admitted to the bar]  Mr. Speaker, nine-tenths of the people of the United States demand the unlimited coinage of the old silver dollar with which to pay their debts and conduct their business.  They demand, in short, the status quo of silver as a money metal from the foundation of the Republic down to the furtive and rascally acts of demonetization in 1873-'74.  They are entitled to have that demand heeded by their Representatives.  This House should at least make a determined effort to secure it.  But if, in a faint, half-hearted way, we accept without a struggle a delusive compromise ---without even asking a committee of conference--- we will wrong ourselves and the people.  By standing firmly for the whole right we will get it now, I think;  and if we fail, a tempest of popular indignation, which no officer of the Government can withstand, will right the wrong, and right it thoroughly.

Mr. Speaker, see how the Bland bill has been perverted by the Senate amendments from its original beneficent purpose and effect.  Our bill declared unlimited coinage of silver.  In Professor Linderman's testimony before the Coinage Committee he says that with our mints open we would get fifteen millions a year from Mexico and three millions from South America.  This, added to our own product, would enable us to coin silver dollars at the rate of about sixty millions a year.  This would call for a reopening of the New Orleans and Charlottesville mints and the enlargement of the capacity of the mints now coining;  but the expense of such preparation would be comparatively trifling.  This bill shuts out silver from abroad, expels from our shores one-half of the product of our own mines, and gives us but twenty-four millions a year, except by the grace of the Secretary of the Treasury, the most inveterate enemy of the silver dollar.  How absurd is the pretense of restoring silver as a legal-tender for public and private debts when, by the same act, we perpetuate a demonetization of nearly two-thirds of the metal to pay them !  And to crown the absurdity we make a large and indefinite appropriation to enable the President to select and send a commission of anti-silver men to Europe to pipe-lay with our foreign creditors for a revocation of even this small concession to the rights of the people.

But these are not all the repulsive features of these amendments.  The country is in an agony of business distress and looks for some relief by a gradual increase of the currency.  The House bill authorized not only unlimited coinage, but coinage of silver bullion owned by citizens for immediate use in business.  This bill authorizes no coinage except for the Government.  Two millions of silver bullion per month are to be bought by the Secretary of the Treasury.  How will he buy it ?  There are no surplus revenues.  But the resumption law authorizes the issue of bonds to prepare for resumption.  Under that law only can he make the purchase, and only by the issue of bonds;  thus saddling the people with at least two millions per month of new bonded debt.  And when silver bullion is bought the resumption act under which he will issue the bonds require that the resulting coin must be hoarded in the Treasury for the redemption of greenbacks.

Thus this bill, instead of giving the people more currency, gives them only more bonded debt.  Instead of being a bill to relieve them from the terrible effects of contraction and resumption, it re-enforces the resumption scheme and encourages its promoters to stand firm and resist all efforts to repeal it.  Sir, we have been button-holed every hour since the bill passed the Senate to hear that we cannot do justice to the people for fear of losing this bill after it leaves the House.  I answer, let us do justice, and let those who dare refuse it answer to their masters, the people.  These amendments cheat the public hope.  They thwart and indefinitely postpone the demands of justice.  If the bill so amended would give substantial relief to the distressed people, I would accept it for that reason, and look to the future to right the wrong it perpetuates.

But it will give no relief, and will prove a mere pretext for adherence to the resumption law, the most gigantic scheme of spoliation ever fastened on a free people.  We are told, "Get this much now, and then get the rest by a new bill."  Sir, if the friends of the people accept this as a triumph, a long truce on this question will follow.  If the enemies of silver will not remonetize it now, when popular excitement is great, will they do it after it has been allayed by a vaunted triumph ?  No, sir;  they will not yield another inch until it shall have been demonstrated by sad experience that the amendments to this bill are in fact a fresh triumph of the wrong over the right, of the money power over the people.

Then, if the masses are not worn out in their struggles to control their own Government, a new agitation will follow, and a new Congress, born of such agitation, secure that justice which can be had now if inflexibly demanded.

Mr. Speaker, I am far from intending to reflect unfavorably on the devotion to the interests of the people of those of my colleagues who heretofore supported the Bland bill, but now think it best to accept the Senate amendments.  It is a question of expediency, on which their opinions may be wiser than mine.  But I must obey the dictates of my own judgment, as my sole guide when called to act on questions of great public importance.

Letter to the Editor in the New-York Daily Tribune (a Republican flag-ship paper), Saturday, September 1, 1877:

"General Thomas Ewing in his speech at Columbus, on Thursday evening, [August 23, 1877.] opening the Ohio campaign for the Democrats, says:

'After they (the European money-kings) had stricken down silver in Germany, they sent Mr. Ernest Seyd to the United States, and had our Congress demonetize it also.'

"This assertion is a fair sample of the kind of instruction which the people of Ohio are likely to receive at the hands of the Democratic advocates of the silver dollar.  Every one who is familiar with the literature of this subject knows that with the single exception of Mr. Cernuschi, who visited this country last Winter, Mr. Ernest Seyd is the ablest, as he certainly is the most earnest, advocate of the so-called double standard who has lately written upon the subject.

"And this is the man who, General Ewing says, was sent from Europe to have our Congress demonetize silver !  Such a proceeding would have been about as sensible as it would be for Secretary Sherman to employ General Ewing to advocate the honest execution of the Resumption Act, or the passage of a new law to make it more effective.

"The greatest danger to the country from the present agitation of the silver question does not arise from any disposition among the people to adopt a dishonest or ruinous policy in regard to the currency, but in their liability to be deceived by the false assertions of ignorant or dishonest demagogues."

Remonetization of Silver.

Mr. Carlisle. [John Griffin Carlisle (1834-1910), Covington Kentucky, D.;  studied law, admitted to the bar]  Mr. Speaker, it is not my purpose now to discuss the general question involved in the proposition to remonetize silver by restoring it to the coinage and making the silver dollar a unit of value and a legal tender in the payment of debts.  I had intended to say something upon that subject if extended debate had been permitted by the House, but under the present circumstances I shall confine my remarks strictly to the amendments proposed by the Senate and reserve for a future occasion, if one should occur, what I have to say concerning the principal matter of controversy between the advocates and opponents of remonetization.

The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Ewing] has taken a very gloomy and despondent view of the situation in which these Senate amendments, if concurred in by the House, will leave the question of remonetization and financial relief.  He anticipates no relief whatever from the passage of the measure in its present form, and he intimates very clearly that in his opinion it would be simply a fresh triumph of the wrong over the right, "of the money power over the people."  I do not agree with the gentleman in these views, and I "think it can be clearly shown that they are the results of a total misconception of the true meaning and effect of the proposed amendments.  In order to understand precisely the effect of the amendments, especially the second one, it will be necessary to consider for a moment the provisions of the original bill as it passed this House.  Omitting the repealing clause at the end of the bill, which was altogether unnecessary, it contained only three substantive propositions.

The first was that there should be coined at the mints of the United States silver dollars of the weight of 412½ grains troy, of standard silver;  the second was that such dollars, together with all silver dollars heretofore coined by the United States of like weight and fineness, should be a legal tender, at their nominal value, for all debts and dues, public and private, except where otherwise provided by contract;  and the third was that any owner of silver bullion might deposit the same at any United States mint or assay office and have it coined into dollars for his benefit upon the same terms and conditions as gold bullion is deposited for coinage under existing laws.  The Senate has not touched either the first or second proposition, except to make a slight verbal alteration in the second, which does not in fact change its meaning to any extent.  But it has struck out the free-coinage clause entirely and substituted in its place a provision which requires the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase the silver bullion on account of the Government and have it coined at the rate of not less than two million dollars' worth nor more than four million dollars' worth per month.

This is the amendment which fills the minds of some of our friends with such gloomy forebodings and excites such a fierce and determined spirit of opposition that there is a disposition among some of them to defeat the whole measure rather than accept this as a part of it.  Now, sir, while this amendment is objectionable to me in some respects, I am constrained to say that it is not so on account of its repudiation of the free-coinage provision of the original bill;  and I will state as briefly as possible the reasons which compel me to take this view of the subject.

Prior to the 14th day of January, 1875, we did not have unlimited free coinage of either metal in this country.  The old silver dollar of 412.5 grains had been dropped from the coinage by the act of February 12, 1873, and had been entirely demonetized by the adoption of the Revised Statutes in June, 1874, while the legal charge for converting standard gold bullion into coin was one-fifth of 1 per cent.  Free coinage of gold was provided for by the second section of the resumption act and was one of the devices adopted by the promoters and managers of that destructive scheme to make it popular with the bullion dealers and to increase the production of gold coin with which to redeem and destroy the legal-tender notes.

The first section of the same act which allowed the free coinage of gold, authorized and required the Secretary of the Treasury, as rapidly as practicable, to cause to be coined at the mints of the United States silver coins of the denominations of ten, twenty-five, and fifty cents, of standard value, and to issue them in redemption of an equal number and amount of fractional currency of similar denominations, but no provision was made for the free coinage of this subsidiary currency.  By the joint resolution of July 22, 1876, the coinage of an additional amount of silver was authorized so as to make the whole, together with the fractional currency outstanding, amount to not more than the sum of $50,000,000.  Under these laws the Government has purchased the silver bullion and coined it on its own account, and consequently we have had an opportunity to ascertain the difference in favor of the Government and the people at large between that system and a system of free coinage such as was contemplated by this bill as it passed the House.

The Director of the Mint in his last report states that from January, 1875, when the coinage of the subsidiary silver commenced, to October 1, 1877, there had been purchased 28,707,634.57 fine ounces, or 31,897,371.73 standard ounces, of silver bullion at the price of $34,118,973.26, being an average of 118.8 cents per ounce fine, and that this bullion at the coining rate of $1.24.4168 per standard ounce will produce $39,685,68.  Here then is a seigniorage or gain to the Government during the period mentioned of $5,566,714.74.  Under a system of free coinage this sum of more than five and a half millions of dollars would have gone directly into the coffers of the holders and speculators in silver bullion, and besides that the Government would have prepared their coin for them at an expense of several millions of dollars more.  Under the free-coinage provisions of the House bill the foreign holders of the demonetized silver of Germany would have the right to flood our mints with it, and have it coined into dollars for their own benefit at the .expense of our Government and people.

The overloaded tax-payers of this country, already staggering and sinking under the burdens imposed upon them by unwise legislation, would have been subjected by that provision to a new exaction of several millions of dollars annually to pay for coining the bullion of capitalists at home and abroad.  I cannot become the advocate of such a system, either as to gold or silver, and although my vote was given for the bill as it passed the House under a suspension of the rules, with this feature in it, I did not approve of it, and then hoped that it would be amended in the Senate.

The mints of the United States are operated at the expense of the whole people, and therefore they should be operated for the benefit of the whole people.  If, on account of a difference between the market value of the bullion and the legal value of the coin there is a seigniorage or gain in the process of coining, the Government should have the benefit of it;  and if, as in the case of gold at the present time, there is no such difference, the holder of the bullion who wants it converted into coin should be required to pay at least enough to defray the expenses of the operation.  The great mass of the people neither own bullion nor metal requiring recoinage, so that the provision of the House bill was not a provision for their benefit, but for the exclusive benefit of a few bullion-dealers and mining companies.

My position upon this subject is briefly this:  I am opposed to free coinage of either gold or silver, but in favor of unlimited coinage of both metals upon terms of exact equality.  No discrimination should be made in favor of one metal and against the other;  nor should any discrimination be made in favor of the holders of either gold or silver bullion and against the great body of the people who own other kinds of property.  A great government should treat all its citizens alike, and whenever it attempts to do otherwise, it will engender a spirit of discontent which sooner or later must disturb the harmony if not the peace of society.

But, sir, we are told that if free coinage is permitted, the silver dollars, as rapidly as they are issued from the mints, will go into the hands of the people for immediate use in their business, while under the Senate amendment, they will go directly into the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury, and be hoarded by him as a part of the fund provided by law for the resumption of specie payments.  For instance, the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Ewing,] after objecting to the amendment because it does not provide for the coinage of all the silver we might possibly be able to procure from Mexico and South America, as well as all of our own production of about $40,000,000 per annum, says:

But these are not all the repulsive features of these amendments.  The country is in an agony of business distress and looks for some relief by a gradual increase of the currency.  The House bill authorized not only unlimited coinage, but coinage of silver bullion owned by citizens for immediate use in business.  This bill authorizes no coinage except for the Government.  Two millions of silver bullion per month are to be bought by the Secretary of the Treasury.  How will he buy it ?  There are no surplus revenues.  But the resumption law authorizes the issue of bonds to prepare for resumption.  Under that law only can he make the purchase, and only by the issue of bonds;  thus saddling the people with at least two millions per month of new bonded debt.  And when silver bullion is bought the resumption act under which he will issue the bonds require that the resulting coin must be hoarded in the Treasury for the redemption of greenbacks.

Thus this bill, instead of giving the people more currency, gives them only more bonded debt.  Instead of being a bill to relieve them from the terrible effects of contraction and resumption, it re-enforces the resumption scheme and encourages its promoters to stand firm and resist all efforts to repeal it.

I confess my astonishment that any gentleman who has carefully read the proposed amendment could be so totally mistaken as to its meaning and effect.  I protest against such a construction, and submit that the Secretary of the Treasury [Mr. Sherman], who is well known to be hostile to the purpose of this bill, ought not to be encouraged by a false interpretation from such high authority as the gentleman from Ohio.  No gentleman can point to a single word in the amendment authorizing the Secretary to purchase bullion for the mints by the issue of bonds, or to a single expression that can be so tortured as to countenance such a proceeding.  The whole authority conferred upon that officer to purchase bullion to be coined into silver dollars is contained in these words:

And the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to purchase, from time to time, silver bullion, at the market price thereof, not less than two million dollars' worth per month, nor more than four million dollars' worth per month, and cause the same to be coined monthly, as fast as so purchased, into such dollars;  and a sum sufficient to carry out the foregoing provision of this act is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.  And any gain or seigniorage arising from this coinage shall be accounted for and paid into the Treasury, as provided under existing laws relative to the subsidiary coinage.

Now there is not one word here about the issue of bonds, and not one word about "surplus revenues."  On the contrary, the money for the purchase of the bullion is appropriated ---actually and unconditionally appropriated out of the Treasury--- just precisely as money is appropriated from time to time by Congress to support the Army and Navy and to defray the ordinary expenses of the Government.

It is not a question of construction, for there is absolutely nothing to be done except to abide by and execute the plain language and command of the law.  There is no sort of ambiguity in the provision, and it might as well be contended that the Secretary can issue bonds and increase the indebtedness of the Government to pay the salary of the President or of members of Congress, or his own salary, as that he can do so for the purpose of purchasing silver bullion under this bill when it becomes a law;  and so it might as well be contended that he cannot pay out appropriations made for the support of any branch of the public service unless there are surplus revenues, as that he can only pay for bullion in money when there are surplus revenues.  In all cases the appropriations are made in the same terms, that is:  "out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated," which means out of any fund not specifically appropriated or dedicated to some other purpose.

The act of January 14, 1875, to provide for the resumption of specie payments, has no connection whatever with the subject to which this bill relates, and the authority conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury for the purpose of executing the provisions of that act cannot be exercised by him for the purpose of executing the provisions of this bill.  They are not in pari materia and any attempt to connect them, to attach one to the other, or to blend their provisions for the purpose of justifying in the execution of one of them the exercise of a power or authority conferred by tbe other would be a flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of both.  The act of January 14, 1875, so far as it relates to the creation and accumulation of a fund for resumption purposes, reads as follows:

And to enable the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare and provide for the redemption in this act authorized or required, he is authorized to use any surplus revenues from time to time in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, and to issue, sell, and dispose of, at not less than par, in coin, either of the descriptions of bonds of the United States described in the act of Congress approved July 14, 1870, entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt," with like qualities, privileges, and exemptions, to the extent necessary to carry this act into full effect, and to use the proceeds thereof for the purposes aforesaid.

It will be observed at once that the whole extent of the authority conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury by that act was to use the surplus revenues not otherwise appropriated and to issue and sell any of the classes of bonds specified in the refunding act, for the purpose of procuring coin ---not bullion, not something to be thereafter coined at the mints--- but money already coined and fitted for the purposes of resumption.  This clause was enacted for a specific and well-understood purpose, to provide for the accumulation of a fund in coin for use in redeeming the legal-tender notes.  It has no relation whatever to the mints or coinage.  What was the meaning of the word "coin" at that date when used in a statute or contract ?  Unquestionably it meant legal coin, the standard of value, the lawful metallic money of the country, which at that time was gold alone in all cases where the contract or statute had reference to amounts exceeding $5, because silver had been demonetized and degraded to a subsidiary coin.

The object of that act then was to obtain and preserve a fund in gold for the purposes of resumption.  It is certainly true that if this bill should become a law, the silver dollars provided for may go into the Treasury, and if they are held there when the day of resumption arrives, they may be lawfully used for that purpose.  But they will not go there under the act of January 14, 1875;  they will go there under this bill, and by an altogether different process from that provided by the resumption law.

As already stated, the resumption act provided for the creation and accumulation of a special fund for a special purpose ---the redemption and retirement of the legal-tender currency--- and whatever coin has been or may be procured under that act by the use of surplus revenues, or by the issue and sale of bonds, is dedicated to that one object.  But the bill and amendments now under consideration do not provide for the creation of such a fund or for an addition to such a fund.  Under this bill, if it shall become a law with the Senate amendments, all the money appropriated for the purchase of bullion will come back again into the Treasury, augmented by the seigniorage, as rapidly as the bullion is converted into coin.  It will come back in the form of receipts from the mints and profits on coinage, and will constitute a part of the general revenue of the Government, just as receipts from the excise taxes, from sales of public lands, and from other sources, now do.  It will not constitute a special fund for resumption purposes, or for any other particular purpose, but will be at all times subject to appropriation by Congress for all the uses of the Government, and will be paid out daily as legal-tender notes and national-bank notes are now paid out by the disbursing officers of the Treasury Department;  and I venture the prediction that in a few months from this time the gentleman from Ohio, notwithstanding his assertion that the silver dollars will be hoarded in the Treasury, will see them beginning to circulate in every part of the country.

I do not wish to be understood as taking the position that the Secretary of the Treasury may not acquire and use silver coin for the purpose of resuming specie payments in case the resumption law shall not be repealed, for I maintain no such proposition.  My purpose is simply to show that the Senate amendment, which provides for coinage on Government account, affords him no more aid or facilities in that respect than would be afforded by a system of perfectly free and unlimited coinage on private account.  Under either system he might acquire the silver coin for that purpose in two ways:  first, by setting it apart out of any surplus revenues that might come into the Treasury, and, secondly, by issuing bonds and selling them for coin ---not bullion--- in the market.  Every gentleman who reflects upon the subject will, I think, acknowledge that his right to acquire silver coin by these methods, and his opportunities to acquire it, would be precisely the same under the House bill as under the Senate amendment, and, if this be so, the attempt to draw a contrast between the two measures in this respect, and to convince the people that they have been again thwarted and cheated, must certainly fail, and ought to be abandoned.

One other thing ought to be borne in mind in this connection.  If the Secretary of the Treasury has the right, as the gentleman from Ohio appears to think he has, to issue bonds for the purchase of silver bullion to be coined for resumption purposes, it is clear that all such purchases and all such coinage must be in addition to the purchases and coinage authorized and required by the amendment under consideration, because all such purchases and coinage must take place under a different law, and for a different object from that contemplated by this amendment.  This measure is not an amendment to the resumption act.  It is entirely new and independent legislation upon a different subject and for a different purpose.  The power of the Secretary of the Treasury to issue and sell bonds for any purpose whatever is neither diminished nor enlarged by it, and to say that he will attempt to substitute the obligations of the Government for a plain appropriation of money is simply to assert that he will deliberately violate his official oath and subject himself to impeachment and removal.

Whatever he may do or omit to do under the resumption act, he must execute this measure, when it becomes a law, according to its true intent and meaning, or he must submit to the consequences.  However great may be our want of confidence in his financial policy, and however much we may regret his unyielding hostility to all measures for the relief of the country, we are not authorized, I think, to assume in advance that he will contumaciously refuse to obey the will of the people when embodied in the form of positive law.  That he will limit the purchase of bullion and the coinage of the silver dollars to the minimum amount specified is not only possible but very probable;  and this is the one feature in the proposed amendment to which I have serious objections.

The Senate has declared by a large vote that the coinage should be limited to a sum of not less than $2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 per month.  If the execution of this measure could be intrusted to a public officer whose opinions upon the subject were in accord with those of the great majority of the American people, and whose sympathies were with the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country, rather than with the idle holders of idle capital, the provision alluded to would be of but little consequence, because he would coin the maximum instead of the minimum amount allowed by the amendment.  But, situated as we are, we all know, or at least we all have reason to believe, that not a dollar beyond the minimum amount will be coined, and consequently the process of getting this money into circulation will be too slow to afford the full measure of relief which the people now demand and need.  But it will certainly afford some relief.  It will reverse the grinding process that has been going on for the last few years.  Instead of constant and relentless contraction ---instead of constant appreciation of money and depreciation of property--- we will have expansion to the extent of at least $2,000,000 per month, and under its influence the exchangeable values of commodities, including labor, will soon begin to rise, thus inviting investments, infusing life into the dead industries of the country, and quickening the pulsations of trade in all its departments.

The only other amendment which has attracted much attention or excited much opposition is the one which constitutes the second section of the bill as it comes back to us from the Senate.  It is said by the opponents of this amendment that it looks to the formation of entangling alliances with foreign nations concerning a matter of purely domestic concern, and that its probable effect will be to again demonetize silver and return to the single gold standard in this country.  To all this the answer is very short and simple.  It proposes no league or alliance with anybody for any purpose.  No one, I presume, will deny that the question as to what ought to be, or shall be, the relative legal values of gold and silver is one of international importance;  but in this country its determination belongs exclusively to the legislative department of the Government.  The treaty-making power does not extend to it in any of its aspects, and consequently no commissioner or diplomatic agent can possibly bind Congress by any agreement or compact in reference to it.  All that can be done by such an official is to consult with the representatives of other nations, to ascertain what has been the experience of their people at different times and under various circumstances, and, if possible, to agree upon and propose a common ratio which will have at least a strong tendency to prevent great and sudden fluctuations in the market values of the two metals and secure regularity and stability in their circulation as money.  It will be the province of Congress at last to settle the question so far as it relates to our own country, and it seems to me that the more information we have upon it the more likely we, or our successors, will be to settle it correctly.

Except during a period of seventeen years, from 1817 to 1834 silver has nearly always been undervalued in its relation to gold by the coinage laws of this country.  Such was the case continually from 1834 until its demonetization in 1873-'74, and the inevitable consequence was that the silver dollar of full legal weight and fineness had entirely disappeared from our circulation for at least twenty years before the suspension of specie payments in 1861-'62.  At the very time of its demonetization it was worth from 3 to 3½ per cent. more than gold, and therefore could not have been kept in circulation with gold, even if specie payments had then been resumed on the double standard.  By the coinage act of April 2, 1792, the ratio between gold and silver was established at 15 to 1;  that is, the silver dollar was made to contain 371¼ grains of pure silver and the eagle 247½ grains of pure gold, or 24¾ grains to the dollar.  At that very time one ounce of pure gold would purchase only 14.43 ounces of pure silver, and so it continued, with the exception of a few years, to be undervalued according to the provisions of the act until 1817, when it began steadily to depreciate relatively to gold, although its purchasing power with reference to all other things was rapidly increasing during the same time.  Finally, in 1834, it had reached a point where 15.73 ounces could be purchased with 1 ounce of gold, and then Congress amended the coinage act for the purpose of more nearly equalizing the legal values of the two metals in the future.

This was attempted, not by increasing the amount of metal in the silver dollar as the special advocates of gold insist shall be done now, but by diminishing the amount of gold in the eagle from 247½ to 234 grains.  This proved to be a very great under-valuation of silver, and in 1837 another change was made, not in the silver coin but in the gold eagle, which was made to contain 232.2 grains, so that the legal equivalency between the two metals became 15.98 of silver to 1 of gold.  At that time the actual mercantile equivalency between the metals was 15.83 of silver to 1 of gold, and the market ratio never reached a point of correspondence with the legal ratio, silver being always worth more than gold, until after the demonetization by this country in 1874.  During a period of one hundred and fourteen years, from 1760 to the close of 1874, there never was a single year, except one, when one ounce of pure gold would purchase 15.98 ounces of pure silver, and yet that was the ratio fixed by the law of this country in 1837, and is the ratio fixed by this bill.

I shall not now enter into an examination of the causes which have combined to depreciate the relative value of silver and to appreciate the value of gold since 1873, but I am one of those who believe that they are transient and temporary in their nature, and that when they have passed away or been removed by the separate or united action of the nations most deeply interested in the subject, the old ratio of actual and relative value will be re-established on a firmer foundation than ever.  I know that the world's stock of the precious metals is none too large and I see no reason to apprehend that it will ever become so.  Mankind will be fortunate indeed if the annual production of gold and silver coin shall keep pace with the annual increase of population, commerce and industry.  According to my views of the subject, the conspiracy which seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy by legislation and otherwise, from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic money of the world is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age.  The consummation of such a scheme would ultimately entail more misery upon the human race than all the wars, pestilences and famines that ever occurred in the history of the world.  The absolute and instantaneous destruction of half the entire movable property of the world, including houses, ships, railroads and all other appliances for carrying on commerce, while it would be felt more sensibly at the moment, would not produce anything like the prolonged distress and disorganization of society that must inevitably result from the permanent annihilation of one-half the metallic money of the world.

With an ample currency, an industrious and frugal people will speedily rebuild their works of internal improvement and repair losses of property, but no amount of industry or economy on the part of the people can create money.  When the government creates it or authorizes it the citizen may acquire it, but he can do nothing more.

I am in favor of every practicable and constitutional measure that will have a tendency to defeat or retard the perpetration of this great crime, and I am also in favor of every practicable and constitutional measure that will aid us in devising a just and permanent ratio of value between the two metals, so that they may circulate side by side and not alternately drive each other into exile from one country to another.  Our ratio, as recognized by the present bill, is 15.98 to 1, while the ratio established by the states composing the Latin union, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and, I believe, Greece also, is 15 to 1.  We therefore undervalue silver as compared with the valuation put upon it by those countries.  Silver is now appreciating in the market, and its remonetization and restoration to the coinage by this country will undoubted1y accelerate its appreciation in the future.  What then will happen ?  Whenever the market value of the metal becomes greater than the legal value fixed by our statute we will witness precisely the same thing that occurred under the operation of the act of 1837:  silver will leave the country and go where it is justly and equably valued by law.  Like every other article, if left free to follow the natural laws of trade it will always find the best market.

Austria and Russia, both single silver standard countries, have suspended specie payments and are using a paper currency exclusively.  Unless the war in Europe and Asia should be reopened and prolonged beyond our present expectations, it is reasonable to suppose that these two great countries, with an aggregate population of more than one hundred and twelve millions, will soon resume the payment of specie ---that is, silver--- and thus create a new and large demand for that metal.  This, if it should occur, will still further appreciate its value and still more increase our danger of losing it unless we can have some understanding and concert of action with the nations of Europe.  There is no danger, in my opinion, that any conference upon this subject will result in a recommendation to increase the quantity of silver in the dollar, because we now have more than the principal states with which the conference is to be held;  and as to the fear, expressed by some, that this is simply a new movement in the interest of demonetization, I think an examination of the proposed amendment will show it to be entirely groundless.  The President will have no authority to invite a conference for any such purpose, and the commissioners appointed by him will have no right to consider or report upon any such question.

The amendment itself states the object of the proposed conference as succinctly and plainly as it can be done.  Here it is:

Sec. 2.  That immediately after the passage of this act the President shall invite the governments of the countries composing the Latin union, so called, and of such other European nations as he may deem advisable, to join the United States in a conference, to adopt a common ratio between gold and silver, for the purpose of establishing internationally the use of bimetallic money and securing fixity of relative value between those metals.

It is "to adopt a common ratio between gold and silver, for the purpose of establishing internationally the use of bimetallic money," not a single standard of either gold or silver, but a double standard as we had in this country from 1792 to 1874, and as we will have again when this bill becomes a law.  The amendment then provides for the meeting of the conference within six months, for a report to the President and its transmission to Congress, and for the compensation of the commissioners.

England, having demonetized silver in 1816 and having steadily adhered to the single gold standard ever since, cannot properly have any representation or voice in the proposed conference unless she is prepared to consider the propriety of restoring to silver coin its money function throughout the British Empire;  but the states of the Latin union, which the President is specially directed to invite, are deeply interested in the questions to be considered, and I therefore think there is reason to hope that some wise and practical measures may be proposed looking to the permanent adjustment of the relative legal values of gold and silver upon a basis that will be just and equitable to debtors and creditors alike.  It seems to me now, notwithstanding the present temporary depreciation of silver, that the most probable result of the proposed conference will be the recommendation of a small diminution of the quantity of silver in our dollar and a small increase of the quantity in the five-franc piece, and that the countries using the two coins may stand hereafter on common ground with reference to this subject.

I have now stated hurriedly, and without much method or arrangement, my views of the amendments proposed by the Senate, so far as they have made material alterations in the original bill, and I desire to add only in conclusion that while the measure, in its present form, is not what the country had a right to expect, it is infinitely better than anything the people have ever been able to obtain at the hands of Congress during the last fifteen years.  It is the first victory won by the people during many weary years of warfare with the consolidated wealth of this and other countries, and although it is not by any means a complete triumph, it marks the beginning of a new and more popular era in national legislation;  it attests a mighty revolution in public sentiment as represented here at the capital;  and it places the great industrial and producing masses of the people in the front and the non-producers in the rear.  For fifteen years the people have been on the defensive, and although fortified by the plainest provisions of law and the clearest principles of equity, they have been continually driven from one position to another until they stood at last upon the very verge of financial ruin.  Gathering all their energies for this struggle, they have advanced ---not very far it is true--- but they have advanced far enough to recover a part of the ground lost in previous conflicts, and, sir, I trust that their representatives will faithfully hold it for them.

Our power of legislation over this subject will not be exhausted by the passage of this measure, and we ought not to halt for a single moment in our efforts to complete the work of relief inaugurated by it.  The struggle now going on cannot cease, and ought not to cease, until all the industrial interests of the country are fully and finally emancipated from the heartless domination of syndicates, stock exchanges, and other great combinations of money-grabbers in this country and in Europe.  Let us, if we can do no better, pass bill after bill, embodying in each some one substantial provision for relief, and send them to the Executive for his approval.  If he withholds his signature, and we are unable to secure the necessary vote, here or elsewhere, to enact them into laws notwithstanding his veto, let us, as a last resort, suspend the rules and put them into the general appropriation bills, with the distinct understanding that if the people can get no relief the Government can get no money.

Coinage of Silver Dollars.

Mr. Vance, [Robert Brank Vance (1828-1899), Asheville North Carolina, D.]  Mr. Speaker, a vast majority of the people of America demand the restoration of silver to its original status as a legal tender.  In fact, in many parts of the country the people were so astounded at the statement that silver was demonetized that they scarcely believed it, and in other parts they pronounced it false.  Silver is the money of the people;  it is convenient, and they like it.  Gold is a royal money, and can never circulate to any extent among the masses.  The bill H.R. No. 1093 comes back to us from the Senate so amended as to scarcely be recognized by its friends.  I am opposed to any limitation of the legal-tender character of silver, and, if opportunity offers, will vote against the amendment to that effect.

I also oppose the clause which limits the Secretary of the Treasury to the issuing of $4,000,000 per month and leaves it discretionary with him to only issue two millions monthly.  In my judgment, this will not give the country the relief so much needed.  I also object to the quantity of silver bullion allowed to be on hand at one time, say, five millions.  It is undoubtedly too low a figure.  I object to the clause calling a conference of different nations to settle the relative value of gold and silver, as I think it will place us in the hands of gold men to the detriment of silver.  I shall therefore vote against the provisions named, as they stand, and will seek to amend them as indicated.  Nevertheless, if these several amendments are adopted, I shall vote for the bill as the best I can get now, and trust to future legislation to bring about a better state of affairs.